Manage AWS accounts with permission sets - AWS IAM Identity Center
Create a permission set that applies least-privilege permissions

Manage AWS accounts with permission sets

A permission set is a template that you create and maintain that defines a collection of one or more IAM policies. Permission sets simplify the assignment of AWS account access for users and groups in your organization. For example, you can create a Database Admin permission set that includes policies for administering AWS RDS, DynamoDB, and Aurora services, and use that single permission set to grant access to a list of target AWS accounts within your AWS Organization for your database administrators.

IAM Identity Center assigns access to a user or group in one or more AWS accounts with permission sets. When you assign a permission set, IAM Identity Center creates corresponding IAM Identity Center-controlled IAM roles in each account, and attaches the policies specified in the permission set to those roles. IAM Identity Center manages the role, and allows the authorized users you’ve defined to assume the role, by using the IAM Identity Center User Portal or AWS CLI.  As you modify the permission set, IAM Identity Center ensures that the corresponding IAM policies and roles are updated accordingly.

You can add AWS managed policies, customer managed policies, inline policies, and AWS managed policies for job functions to your permission sets. You can also assign an AWS managed policy or a customer managed policy as a permissions boundary.

To create a permission set, see Create, manage, and delete permission sets.

Create a permission set that applies least-privilege permissions

To follow the best practice of applying least-privilege permissions, after you create an administrative permission set, you create a more restrictive permission set and assign it to one or more users. The permission sets created in the previous procedure provide a starting point for you to assess the amount of access to resources your users need. To switch to least privilege permissions, you can run IAM Access Analyzer to monitor principals with AWS managed policies. After learning which permissions they're using, then you can write a custom policy or generate a policy with only the required permissions for your team.

With IAM Identity Center, you can assign multiple permission sets to the same user. Your administrative user should also be assigned additional, more restrictive, permission sets. That way, they can access your AWS account with only the permissions that required, rather than always using their administrative permissions.

For example, if you're a developer, after you create your administrative user in IAM Identity Center, you can create a new permission set that grants PowerUserAccess permissions, and then assign that permission set to yourself. Unlike the administrative permission set, which uses AdministratorAccess permissions, the PowerUserAccess permission set doesn't allow management of IAM users and groups. When you sign into the AWS access portal to access your AWS account, you can choose PowerUserAccess rather than the AdministratorAccess to perform development tasks in the account.

Keep the following considerations in mind:

  • To get started quickly with creating a more restrictive permission set, use a predefined permission set rather than a custom permission set.

    With a predefined permission set, which uses predefined permissions, you choose a single AWS managed policy from a list of available policies. Each policy grants a specific level of access to AWS services and resources or permissions for a common job function. For information about each of these policies, see AWS managed policies for job functions.

  • You can configure the session duration for a permission set to control the length of time that a user is signed into an AWS account.

    When users federate into their AWS account and use the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), IAM Identity Center uses the session duration setting on the permission set to control the duration of the session. By default, the value for Session duration, which determines the length of time that a user can be signed into an AWS account before AWS signs the user out of the session, is set to one hour. You can specify a maximum value of 12 hours. For more information, see Set session duration for AWS accounts.

  • You can also configure the AWS access portal session duration to control the length of time that a workforce user is signed into the portal.

    By default, the value for Maximum session duration, which determines the length of time that a workforce user can be signed in to the AWS access portal before they must re-authenticate, is eight hours. You can specify a maximum value of 90 days. For more information, see Configure the session duration of the AWS access portal and IAM Identity Center integrated applications.

  • When you sign into the AWS access portal, choose the role that provides least-privilege permissions.

    Each permission set that you create and assign to your user appears as an available role in the AWS access portal. When you sign in to the portal as that user, choose the role that corresponds to the most restrictive permission set that you can use to perform tasks in the account, rather than AdministratorAccess.

  • You can add other users to IAM Identity Center and assign existing or new permission sets to those users.

    For information, see, Assign user or group access to AWS accounts.

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