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Ensure IAM Policies are Attached Only to Groups or Roles

Ensure IAM Policies are Attached Only to Groups or Roles

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a best practice recommendation for creating IAM policies that can help you reduce the complexity of your access management and reduce the risk of inadvertently granting excessive privileges to individuals. By default, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies grant permissions to the user who creates them. If a user is deleted, any policies directly attached to the user are lost unless they are copied to another principal. This is inconvenient because it adds additional work for someone deleting an account that contains policies directly attached to individual users. If you assign privileges at the group or role level instead of directly to users, deleting group members or role members does not cause any policies to be lost because they're attached at that level rather than directly onto members of those groups or roles.

By default, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies grant permissions to the user who creates them. If a user is deleted, any policies directly attached to the user are lost, unless they are copied to another principal. This is inconvenient because it adds additional work for the person deleting the user account.

In general, you should avoid attaching IAM policies directly to users. This is because deleting a user account causes access management policies to be lost. Instead of using individual users as the target of your access management policies, attach them to groups or roles.

This makes managing access management policies more complex if policies are attached to individual users, because it requires you to carefully manage which users have access to each resource. Managing access management policies is also more complex if there are many users who need different levels of permission.

If you assign privileges at the group or role level, deleting a group member or role member does not cause any policies to be lost because the policy is attached to the group or role, not to the member.

If you assign privileges at the group or role level, deleting a group member or role member does not cause any policies to be lost because the policy is attached to the group or role, not to the member. When you delete a user, their associated IAM policy remains in effect until it expires. If you remove all members from a group, AWS will automatically disable all of its associated IAM policies.

If you change a role’s IAM policy after users have been added to it (for example if you add more permissions), then those new permissions aren't automatically applied to existing users - they'll need to accept them again via their console sign-in page.

If you assign privileges at the group or role level, deleting a group member or role member does not cause any policies to be lost because the policy is attached to the group or role, not to the member. When you delete a user, their associated IAM policy remains in effect until it expires. If you remove all members from a group, AWS will automatically disable all of its associated IAM policies. If you change a role’s IAM policy after users have been added to it

In high-volume IT environments where there are many users and complex access management relationships, assigning privileges at the group or role level reduces the complexity of access management as the number of users grows. Reducing access management complexity may reduce the opportunity for a principal to inadvertently receive or retain excessive privileges.

In high-volume IT environments where there are many users and complex access management relationships, assigning privileges at the group or role level reduces the complexity of access management as the number of users grows. Reducing access management complexity may reduce the opportunity for a principal to inadvertently receive or retain excessive privileges.

In addition to reducing complexity, groups and roles can be used to simplify the process of creating IAM policies. When you use groups or roles in your IAM policies, you can assign permissions directly to them rather than assigning them individually through individual user accounts. For example, if all employees need access to certain files on a file server, one way of granting this right is by assigning permissions through individual user accounts—one account for every employee who needs access to those files. A simpler way would be to create an OU called “Employees” that contains only those users who require this right and then create an IAM policy called “Employee Access” that grants that right at the OU level instead of at the individual account level.

To follow this best practice recommendation:

  • Ensure that all IAM policies are attached only to groups or roles rather than directly to users.
  • This reduces complexity of access management as the number of users grows.
  • Reducing access management complexity may reduce the opportunity for a principal to inadvertently receive or retain excessive privileges.

* Ensure that all IAM policies are attached only to groups or roles rather than directly to users.

If you do not adhere to this best practice, when a user is deleted, his or her access will also be deleted. As a result, it is not possible to re-assign these permissions to another user or group. This can have a significant impact on your organization because users may require different levels of access as their roles change.

Roles and groups are an effective way of securing your AWS resources because they allow you to enforce consistent permissions across all users within that role or group with minimal management overhead (for example, you don't need to assign each individual permission).

Conclusion

It is important to follow this best practice recommendation because it reduces the risk of a principal having excessive privileges. As an organization grows, the number of users and their roles within the organization will increase. The complexity of access management relationships also increases as a result. By following this best practice recommendation, you can reduce complexity by assigning privileges at the group or role level rather than directly to individual users wherever possible.

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