AWS Security Blog

Tag: roles

AWS Identity and Access Management

How to use the PassRole permission with IAM roles

iam:PassRole is an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission that allows an IAM principal to delegate or pass permissions to an AWS service by configuring a resource such as an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance or AWS Lambda function with an IAM role. The service then uses that role to interact with […]

How to use trust policies with IAM roles

June 20 2023: The wording in this post has been updated to avoid confusion around the use of wildcards in the principal element of an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) trust policy statement. November 3, 2022: We updated this post to fix some syntax errors in the policy statements and to add additional use […]

New IAMCTL tool compares multiple IAM roles and policies

If you have multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts, and you have AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles among those multiple accounts that are supposed to be similar, those roles can deviate over time from your intended baseline due to manual actions performed directly out-of-band called drift. As part of regular compliance checks, you […]

Identify unused IAM roles and remove them confidently with the last used timestamp

February 19, 2024: You can now use IAM Access Analyzer to easily identify unused roles. Read this blog post to learn more. November 25, 2019: We’ve corrected a documentation link. As you build on AWS, you create AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles to enable teams and applications to use AWS services. As those […]

Now Use AWS IAM to Delete a Service-Linked Role When You No Longer Require an AWS Service to Perform Actions on Your Behalf

Earlier this year, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) introduced service-linked roles, which provide you an easy and secure way to delegate permissions to AWS services. Each service-linked role delegates permissions to an AWS service, which is called its linked service. Service-linked roles help with monitoring and auditing requirements by providing a transparent way to […]

Introducing an Easier Way to Delegate Permissions to AWS Services: Service-Linked Roles

Some AWS services create and manage AWS resources on your behalf. To do this, these services require you to delegate permissions to them by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles. Today, AWS IAM introduces service-linked roles, which give you an easier and more secure way to delegate permissions to AWS services. To start, […]

Adhere to IAM Best Practices in 2016

As another new year begins, we encourage you to review our recommended AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) best practices. Following these best practices can help you maintain the security of your AWS resources. You can learn more by watching the IAM Best Practices to Live By presentation that Anders Samuelsson gave at AWS re:Invent […]

How to Use a Single IAM User to Easily Access All Your Accounts by Using the AWS CLI

Many AWS customers keep their environments separated from each other: development resources do not interact with production, and vice versa. One way to achieve this separation is by using multiple AWS accounts. Though this approach does help with resource isolation, it can increase your user management because each AWS account can have its own AWS […]

Make a New Year Resolution: Adhere to IAM Best Practices

As another new year begins, we want to encourage you to be familiar with recommended AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) best practices. Following these best practices can help you maintain the security of your AWS account. You can learn more by watching the IAM Best Practices presentation that was given by Anders Samuelsson at […]

Enable a New Feature in the AWS Management Console: Cross-Account Access

Today, we made it possible for you to enable a user to switch roles directly in the AWS Management Console to access resources across multiple AWS accounts—while using only one set of credentials. Previously, as Anders discussed in his blog post, Delegating API Access to AWS Services Using IAM Roles, you could delegate access to […]