A Practical Guide to AWS IAM
A Practical Guide to AWS IAM
How to Write Policies, Control Access, and Secure an AWS Account
About the Book
Given a task to make a security incident in an AWS account less likely and less impactful, an expert configures tighter access control. This book shows you the tools to do just that.
IAM is a complicated service, there is no sugarcoating that. There are tons of configuration options and each service integrates with it differently. Nobody knows all the quirks and exceptions, and every situation requires a lot of experimentation.
I remember when I started out with AWS I felt it was an obstacle, making everything a lot harder than necessary. Everything was hidden behind some technical jargon and it wasn't intuitive at all where to configure things. Then its JSON policy structure required a lot of searching for solutions. IAM was in my way whatever I wanted to do.
It was much later when I become interested in security and that was when I realized how essential IAM is to secure an AWS account. There are a lot of other services for security, such as Config, Security Hub, CloudTrail, and GuardDuty, but they all play a secondary role. The security of an account lies in the configuration of IAM.
After a bit of learning, I started to see the underlying logic behind all those obscure terminology that felt so distant at first. The identities, the types and structure of the policies all fit into a bigger picture that defines the security posture of an account.
This book focuses on what is common in setting up access control in AWS: not how to fine-tune permissions for an S3 bucket but how resource-based policies work, which are used in S3, KMS, and several other services. Similarly, instead of detailing all the available condition keys, you'll learn where to find them and how to use them in the policy language.
Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that works in all situations. So this book does what I believe is the next best thing: it shows how IAM and its components work so you'll be able to better decide on a solution for your security-related tasks. You'll learn what is common so that you'll have an easier time figuring out the solutions for specific problems.
This book helps you to:
* Set up users and roles in an efficient way
* Write IAM policies
* Reason about what a given policy does
* Implement tighter access control
About the Author
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Structure of this book
- Access control basics
- Where IAM controls access
- Access elements
- Principal
- IAM Users
- IAM Roles
- Special Principals
- Resource
- Action
- Metadata
- Principal
- CloudTrail logging
- IAM Policies
- Structure
- Filters
- Principal/NotPrincipal
- Resource/NotResource
- Action/NotAction
- Condition
- Strings
- IfExists
- Variables
- Multiple values
- Other types
- Filters
- Policy types
- Identity-based policies
- Inline and managed policies
- Resource-based policies
- Service Control Policy (SCP)
- Session policy
- Permissions boundary
- Identity-based policies
- Visual editor
- Structure
- Evaluation flow
- Step 1: Build the request context
- Step 2: Collect all applicable policies
- Step 3: Run the evaluation logic
- Evaluation examples
- Identity policies to allow access
- Resource policy to deny access
- Resource policy to allow access
- Using conditions
- Tag-based access control
- Restricted resources
- How to secure an AWS account
- Security as an AWS administrator
- Do not reuse credentials
- Minimize the number of policies
- Use separate accounts via Organizations
- Implement least privilege
- Minimize transitive permissions
- Use monitoring and logging
- Security as a developer
- Follow an additive permission strategy
- Use roles instead of users where possible
- Maintain an identical test environment
- Automate security checks
- Security as an AWS administrator
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- About the author
Authors have earned$10,352,453writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
The Leanpub 45-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 45 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
Continuous Delivery Pipelines
Dave FarleyThis practical handbook provides a step-by-step guide for you to get the best continuous delivery pipeline for your software.
- #2
Rector - The Power of Automated Refactoring
Matthias Noback and Tomas Votruba - #3
Top 20 Digital Health Trends For The Near Future
Dr. Bertalan MeskoDigital technology could help transform unsustainable healthcare systems, provide cheaper, faster, and more effective solutions for diseases – and could lead to healthier individuals living in healthier communities.
In this book, we analyze the top 20 trends shaping the future of healthcare, and what they all look like in practice.
- #4
Learning Algorithms Through Programming and Puzzle Solving
Alexander S. Kulikov and Pavel PevznerThis book powers our MicroMasters program on edX and specialization on Coursera, one of the ten most popular computer science courses on Coursera. Over half a million students have tried to solve many programming challenges and algorithmic puzzles described in this book. We invite you to join them! See the webpage of the book for more details.
- #5
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #6
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
- #7
Atomic Kotlin
Bruce Eckel and Svetlana IsakovaFor both beginning and experienced programmers! From the author of the multi-award-winning Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java together with a member of the Kotlin language team comes a book that breaks the concepts into small, easy-to-digest "atoms," along with exercises supported by hints and solutions directly inside IntelliJ IDEA!
- #8
C++20
Rainer GrimmC++20 is the next big C++ standard after C++11. As C++11 did it, C++20 changes the way we program modern C++. This change is, in particular, due to the big four of C++20: ranges, coroutines, concepts, and modules.
- #9
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book
Andriy BurkovEverything you really need to know in Machine Learning in a hundred pages.
- #10
C++ Best Practices
Jason TurnerLevel up your C++, get the tools working for you, eliminate common problems, and move on to more exciting things!
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture for Developers: Volumes 1 & 2 - Technical leadership and communication
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #3
The Python Craftsman
3 Books
The Python Craftsman series comprises The Python Apprentice, The Python Journeyman, and The Python Master. The first book is primarily suitable for for programmers with some experience of programming in another language. If you don't have any experience with programming this book may be a bit daunting. You'll be learning not just a programming...
