AWS Security Blog
Tag: AWS IAM
How to import existing AWS Organizations SCPs and RCPs to CloudFormation
Many AWS Organizations customers begin by creating and manually applying service control policies (SCPs) and resource control policies (RCPs) through the AWS Management Console or AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) when they first set up their environments. However, as the organization grows and the number of policies increases, this manual approach can become cumbersome. It can […]
Use AWS service reference information to automate policy management workflows
HAQM Web Services (AWS) provides service reference information in JSON format to help you automate policy management workflows. With the service reference information, you can access available actions across AWS services from machine-readable files. The service reference information helps to address a key customer need: keeping up with the ever-growing list of services and actions […]
Four ways to grant cross-account access in AWS
As your HAQM Web Services (AWS) environment grows, you might develop a need to grant cross-account access to resources. This could be for various reasons, such as enabling centralized operations across multiple AWS accounts, sharing resources across teams or projects within your organization, or integrating with third-party services. However, granting cross-account access requires careful consideration […]
How to implement IAM policy checks with Visual Studio Code and IAM Access Analyzer
In a previous blog post, we introduced the IAM Access Analyzer custom policy check feature, which allows you to validate your policies against custom rules. Now we’re taking a step further and bringing these policy checks directly into your development environment with the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code (VS Code). In this blog post, […]
Customize the scope of IAM Access Analyzer unused access analysis
AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer simplifies inspecting unused access to guide you towards least privilege. You can use unused access findings to identify over-permissive access granted to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and users in your accounts or organization. From a delegated administrator account for IAM Access Analyzer, you can use the dashboard […]
Secure root user access for member accounts in AWS Organizations
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) now supports centralized management of root access for member accounts in AWS Organizations. With this capability, you can remove unnecessary root user credentials for your member accounts and automate some routine tasks that previously required root user credentials, such as restoring access to HAQM Simple Storage Service (HAQM S3) […]
Secure by Design: AWS enhances centralized security controls as MFA requirements expand
At HAQM Web Services (AWS), we’ve built our services with secure by design principles from day one, including features that set a high bar for our customers’ default security posture. Strong authentication is a foundational component in overall account security, and the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the simplest and most effective […]
Refine unused access using IAM Access Analyzer recommendations
As a security team lead, your goal is to manage security for your organization at scale and ensure that your team follows AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) security best practices, such as the principle of least privilege. As your developers build on AWS, you need visibility across your organization to make sure that teams […]
Using HAQM Detective for IAM investigations
January 31, 2025: This post was revised to update several paragraphs in the section Scenario 1: Automated investigations. Uncovering AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users and roles potentially involved in a security event can be a challenging task, requiring security analysts to gather and analyze data from various sources, and determine the full scope […]
Strategies for achieving least privilege at scale – Part 2
In this post, we continue with our recommendations for achieving least privilege at scale with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). In Part 1 of this two-part series, we described the first five of nine strategies for implementing least privilege in IAM at scale. We also looked at a few mental models that can assist […]