How Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor works with IAM - Amazon CloudWatch
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How Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Internet Monitor, learn what IAM features are available to use with Internet Monitor.

To see tables showing a similar high-level view of how Amazon services work with most IAM features, see Amazon services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

IAM features you can use with Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor
IAM feature Internet Monitor support

Identity-based policies

Yes

Resource-based policies

No

Policy actions

Yes

Policy resources

Yes

Policy condition keys (service-specific)

Yes

ACLs

No

ABAC (tags in policies)

Partial

Temporary credentials

Yes

Principal permissions

Yes

Service roles

No

Service-linked roles

Yes

Identity-based policies for Internet Monitor

Supports identity-based policies

Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Creating IAM policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. You can't specify the principal in an identity-based policy because it applies to the user or role to which it is attached. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Resource-based policies within Internet Monitor

Supports resource-based policies

No

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples of resource-based policies are IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource.

Policy actions for Internet Monitor

Supports policy actions

Yes

Administrators can use Amazon JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated Amazon API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of Internet Monitor actions, see Actions defined by Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in Internet Monitor use the following prefix before the action:

internetmonitor

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [ "internetmonitor:action1", "internetmonitor:action2" ]

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word Describe, include the following action:

"Action": "internetmonitor:Describe*"

Policy resources for Internet Monitor

Supports policy resources

Yes

In the Service Authorization Reference, you can see the following information related to Internet Monitor:

Administrators can use Amazon JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

Policy condition keys for Internet Monitor

Supports service-specific policy condition keys

Yes

Administrators can use Amazon JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, Amazon evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, Amazon evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all Amazon global condition keys, see Amazon global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of Internet Monitor condition keys, see Condition keys for Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions defined by Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor.

ACLs in Internet Monitor

Supports ACLs

No

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

ABAC with Internet Monitor

Supports ABAC (tags in policies)

Partial

Internet Monitor has partial support for tags in policies. It supports tagging for one resource, monitors.

To use tags with Internet Monitor, use the Amazon Command Line Interface or an Amazon SDK. Tagging for Internet Monitor is not supported with the Amazon Web Services Management Console.

To learn more about using tags in policies in general, review the following information.

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes. In Amazon, these attributes are called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities (users or roles) and to many Amazon resources. Tagging entities and resources is the first step of ABAC. Then you design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource that they are trying to access.

ABAC is helpful in environments that are growing rapidly and helps with situations where policy management becomes cumbersome.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see What is ABAC? in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

Using temporary credentials with Internet Monitor

Supports temporary credentials

Yes

Some Amazon Web Services don't work when you sign in using temporary credentials. For additional information, including which Amazon Web Services work with temporary credentials, see Amazon Web Services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

You are using temporary credentials if you sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console using any method except a user name and password. For example, when you access Amazon using your company's single sign-on (SSO) link, that process automatically creates temporary credentials. You also automatically create temporary credentials when you sign in to the console as a user and then switch roles. For more information about switching roles, see Switching to a role (console) in the IAM User Guide.

You can manually create temporary credentials using the Amazon CLI or Amazon API. You can then use those temporary credentials to access Amazon. Amazon recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM.

Cross-service principal permissions for Internet Monitor

Supports forward access sessions (FAS)

Yes

When you use an IAM user or role to perform actions in Amazon, you are considered a principal. When you use some services, you might perform an action that then initiates another action in a different service. FAS uses the permissions of the principal calling an Amazon Web Service, combined with the requesting Amazon Web Service to make requests to downstream services. FAS requests are only made when a service receives a request that requires interactions with other Amazon Web Services or resources to complete. In this case, you must have permissions to perform both actions. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for Internet Monitor

Supports service roles

No

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Creating a role to delegate permissions to an Amazon Web Service in the IAM User Guide.

Service-linked role for Internet Monitor

Supports service-linked roles

Yes

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an Amazon Web Service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your Amazon Web Services account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For more information about the service-linked role for Internet Monitor, see Service-linked role for Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor.

For details about creating or managing service-linked roles in general in Amazon, see Amazon services that work with IAM. Find a service in the table that includes a Yes in the Service-linked role column. Choose the Yes link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.