PutAccountPolicy - Amazon CloudWatch Logs
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PutAccountPolicy

Creates an account-level data protection policy, subscription filter policy, or field index policy that applies to all log groups or a subset of log groups in the account.

Data protection policy

A data protection policy can help safeguard sensitive data that's ingested by your log groups by auditing and masking the sensitive log data. Each account can have only one account-level data protection policy.

Important

Sensitive data is detected and masked when it is ingested into a log group. When you set a data protection policy, log events ingested into the log groups before that time are not masked.

If you use PutAccountPolicy to create a data protection policy for your whole account, it applies to both existing log groups and all log groups that are created later in this account. The account-level policy is applied to existing log groups with eventual consistency. It might take up to 5 minutes before sensitive data in existing log groups begins to be masked.

By default, when a user views a log event that includes masked data, the sensitive data is replaced by asterisks. A user who has the logs:Unmask permission can use a GetLogEvents or FilterLogEvents operation with the unmask parameter set to true to view the unmasked log events. Users with the logs:Unmask can also view unmasked data in the CloudWatch Logs console by running a CloudWatch Logs Insights query with the unmask query command.

For more information, including a list of types of data that can be audited and masked, see Protect sensitive log data with masking.

To use the PutAccountPolicy operation for a data protection policy, you must be signed on with the logs:PutDataProtectionPolicy and logs:PutAccountPolicy permissions.

The PutAccountPolicy operation applies to all log groups in the account. You can use PutDataProtectionPolicy to create a data protection policy that applies to just one log group. If a log group has its own data protection policy and the account also has an account-level data protection policy, then the two policies are cumulative. Any sensitive term specified in either policy is masked.

Subscription filter policy

A subscription filter policy sets up a real-time feed of log events from CloudWatch Logs to other Amazon services. Account-level subscription filter policies apply to both existing log groups and log groups that are created later in this account. Supported destinations are Kinesis Data Streams, Firehose, and Lambda. When log events are sent to the receiving service, they are Base64 encoded and compressed with the GZIP format.

The following destinations are supported for subscription filters:

  • An Kinesis Data Streams data stream in the same account as the subscription policy, for same-account delivery.

  • An Firehose data stream in the same account as the subscription policy, for same-account delivery.

  • A Lambda function in the same account as the subscription policy, for same-account delivery.

  • A logical destination in a different account created with PutDestination, for cross-account delivery. Kinesis Data Streams and Firehose are supported as logical destinations.

Each account can have one account-level subscription filter policy per Region. If you are updating an existing filter, you must specify the correct name in PolicyName. To perform a PutAccountPolicy subscription filter operation for any destination except a Lambda function, you must also have the iam:PassRole permission.

Transformer policy

Creates or updates a log transformer policy for your account. You use log transformers to transform log events into a different format, making them easier for you to process and analyze. You can also transform logs from different sources into standardized formats that contain relevant, source-specific information. After you have created a transformer, CloudWatch Logs performs this transformation at the time of log ingestion. You can then refer to the transformed versions of the logs during operations such as querying with CloudWatch Logs Insights or creating metric filters or subscription filters.

You can also use a transformer to copy metadata from metadata keys into the log events themselves. This metadata can include log group name, log stream name, account ID and Region.

A transformer for a log group is a series of processors, where each processor applies one type of transformation to the log events ingested into this log group. For more information about the available processors to use in a transformer, see Processors that you can use.

Having log events in standardized format enables visibility across your applications for your log analysis, reporting, and alarming needs. CloudWatch Logs provides transformation for common log types with out-of-the-box transformation templates for major Amazon log sources such as VPC flow logs, Lambda, and Amazon RDS. You can use pre-built transformation templates or create custom transformation policies.

You can create transformers only for the log groups in the Standard log class.

You can have one account-level transformer policy that applies to all log groups in the account. Or you can create as many as 20 account-level transformer policies that are each scoped to a subset of log groups with the selectionCriteria parameter. If you have multiple account-level transformer policies with selection criteria, no two of them can use the same or overlapping log group name prefixes. For example, if you have one policy filtered to log groups that start with my-log, you can't have another field index policy filtered to my-logpprod or my-logging.

You can also set up a transformer at the log-group level. For more information, see PutTransformer. If there is both a log-group level transformer created with PutTransformer and an account-level transformer that could apply to the same log group, the log group uses only the log-group level transformer. It ignores the account-level transformer.

Field index policy

You can use field index policies to create indexes on fields found in log events in the log group. Creating field indexes can help lower the scan volume for CloudWatch Logs Insights queries that reference those fields, because these queries attempt to skip the processing of log events that are known to not match the indexed field. Good fields to index are fields that you often need to query for and fields or values that match only a small fraction of the total log events. Common examples of indexes include request ID, session ID, user IDs, or instance IDs. For more information, see Create field indexes to improve query performance and reduce costs

To find the fields that are in your log group events, use the GetLogGroupFields operation.

For example, suppose you have created a field index for requestId. Then, any CloudWatch Logs Insights query on that log group that includes requestId = value or requestId in [value, value, ...] will attempt to process only the log events where the indexed field matches the specified value.

Matches of log events to the names of indexed fields are case-sensitive. For example, an indexed field of RequestId won't match a log event containing requestId.

You can have one account-level field index policy that applies to all log groups in the account. Or you can create as many as 20 account-level field index policies that are each scoped to a subset of log groups with the selectionCriteria parameter. If you have multiple account-level index policies with selection criteria, no two of them can use the same or overlapping log group name prefixes. For example, if you have one policy filtered to log groups that start with my-log, you can't have another field index policy filtered to my-logpprod or my-logging.

If you create an account-level field index policy in a monitoring account in cross-account observability, the policy is applied only to the monitoring account and not to any source accounts.

If you want to create a field index policy for a single log group, you can use PutIndexPolicy instead of PutAccountPolicy. If you do so, that log group will use only that log-group level policy, and will ignore the account-level policy that you create with PutAccountPolicy.

Request Syntax

{ "policyDocument": "string", "policyName": "string", "policyType": "string", "scope": "string", "selectionCriteria": "string" }

Request Parameters

For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.

The request accepts the following data in JSON format.

policyDocument

Specify the policy, in JSON.

Data protection policy

A data protection policy must include two JSON blocks:

  • The first block must include both a DataIdentifer array and an Operation property with an Audit action. The DataIdentifer array lists the types of sensitive data that you want to mask. For more information about the available options, see Types of data that you can mask.

    The Operation property with an Audit action is required to find the sensitive data terms. This Audit action must contain a FindingsDestination object. You can optionally use that FindingsDestination object to list one or more destinations to send audit findings to. If you specify destinations such as log groups, Firehose streams, and S3 buckets, they must already exist.

  • The second block must include both a DataIdentifer array and an Operation property with an Deidentify action. The DataIdentifer array must exactly match the DataIdentifer array in the first block of the policy.

    The Operation property with the Deidentify action is what actually masks the data, and it must contain the "MaskConfig": {} object. The "MaskConfig": {} object must be empty.

For an example data protection policy, see the Examples section on this page.

Important

The contents of the two DataIdentifer arrays must match exactly.

In addition to the two JSON blocks, the policyDocument can also include Name, Description, and Version fields. The Name is different than the operation's policyName parameter, and is used as a dimension when CloudWatch Logs reports audit findings metrics to CloudWatch.

The JSON specified in policyDocument can be up to 30,720 characters long.

Subscription filter policy

A subscription filter policy can include the following attributes in a JSON block:

  • DestinationArn The ARN of the destination to deliver log events to. Supported destinations are:

    • An Kinesis Data Streams data stream in the same account as the subscription policy, for same-account delivery.

    • An Firehose data stream in the same account as the subscription policy, for same-account delivery.

    • A Lambda function in the same account as the subscription policy, for same-account delivery.

    • A logical destination in a different account created with PutDestination, for cross-account delivery. Kinesis Data Streams and Firehose are supported as logical destinations.

  • RoleArn The ARN of an IAM role that grants CloudWatch Logs permissions to deliver ingested log events to the destination stream. You don't need to provide the ARN when you are working with a logical destination for cross-account delivery.

  • FilterPattern A filter pattern for subscribing to a filtered stream of log events.

  • Distribution The method used to distribute log data to the destination. By default, log data is grouped by log stream, but the grouping can be set to Random for a more even distribution. This property is only applicable when the destination is an Kinesis Data Streams data stream.

Transformer policy

A transformer policy must include one JSON block with the array of processors and their configurations. For more information about available processors, see Processors that you can use.

Field index policy

A field index filter policy can include the following attribute in a JSON block:

  • Fields The array of field indexes to create.

It must contain at least one field index.

The following is an example of an index policy document that creates two indexes, RequestId and TransactionId.

"policyDocument": "{ \"Fields\": [ \"RequestId\", \"TransactionId\" ] }"

Type: String

Required: Yes

policyName

A name for the policy. This must be unique within the account.

Type: String

Required: Yes

policyType

The type of policy that you're creating or updating.

Type: String

Valid Values: DATA_PROTECTION_POLICY | SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER_POLICY | FIELD_INDEX_POLICY | TRANSFORMER_POLICY

Required: Yes

scope

Currently the only valid value for this parameter is ALL, which specifies that the data protection policy applies to all log groups in the account. If you omit this parameter, the default of ALL is used.

Type: String

Valid Values: ALL

Required: No

selectionCriteria

Use this parameter to apply the new policy to a subset of log groups in the account.

Specifing selectionCriteria is valid only when you specify SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER_POLICY, FIELD_INDEX_POLICY or TRANSFORMER_POLICYfor policyType.

If policyType is SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER_POLICY, the only supported selectionCriteria filter is LogGroupName NOT IN []

If policyType is FIELD_INDEX_POLICY or TRANSFORMER_POLICY, the only supported selectionCriteria filter is LogGroupNamePrefix

The selectionCriteria string can be up to 25KB in length. The length is determined by using its UTF-8 bytes.

Using the selectionCriteria parameter with SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER_POLICY is useful to help prevent infinite loops. For more information, see Log recursion prevention.

Type: String

Required: No

Response Syntax

{ "accountPolicy": { "accountId": "string", "lastUpdatedTime": number, "policyDocument": "string", "policyName": "string", "policyType": "string", "scope": "string", "selectionCriteria": "string" } }

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response.

The following data is returned in JSON format by the service.

accountPolicy

The account policy that you created.

Type: AccountPolicy object

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

InvalidParameterException

A parameter is specified incorrectly.

HTTP Status Code: 400

LimitExceededException

You have reached the maximum number of resources that can be created.

HTTP Status Code: 400

OperationAbortedException

Multiple concurrent requests to update the same resource were in conflict.

HTTP Status Code: 400

ServiceUnavailableException

The service cannot complete the request.

HTTP Status Code: 500

Examples

To create a log transformer policy

The following example creates a log transformer that applies to log groups have names that start with test-

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: logs.<region>.<domain> X-Amz-Date: <DATE> Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-type;date;host;user-agent;x-amz-date;x-amz-target;x-amzn-requestid, Signature=<Signature> User-Agent: <UserAgentString> Accept: application/json Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1 Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes> Connection: Keep-Alive X-Amz-Target: Logs_20140328.PutAccountPolicy { "policyName": "ExamplePolicy", "policyType": "TRANSFORMER_POLICY", "policyDocument": [ { "parseJSON": {} }, { "addKeys": { "entries": [ { "key": "metadata.transformed_in", "value": "CloudWatchLogs" } ] } }, { "trimString": { "withKeys": [ "status" ] } }, { "lowerCaseString": { "withKeys": [ "status" ] } } ], "selectionCriteria": 'LogGroupNamePrefix= "test-"' }

To create an account-wide data protection policy

The following example creates an account-wide log group data protection policy.

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: logs.<region>.<domain> X-Amz-Date: <DATE> Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-type;date;host;user-agent;x-amz-date;x-amz-target;x-amzn-requestid, Signature=<Signature> User-Agent: <UserAgentString> Accept: application/json Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1 Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes> Connection: Keep-Alive X-Amz-Target: Logs_20140328.PutAccountPolicy { "policyName": "my_global_data_protection_policy", "policyType": "GLOBAL", "policyDocument": { "Description": "test description", "Version": "2021-06-01", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "audit-policy test", "DataIdentifier": [ "arn:aws:dataprotection::aws:data-identifier/EmailAddress", "arn:aws:dataprotection::aws:data-identifier/DriversLicense-US" ], "Operation": { "Audit": { "FindingsDestination": { "CloudWatchLogs": { "LogGroup": "EXISTING_LOG_GROUP_IN_YOUR_ACCOUNT" }, "Firehose": { "DeliveryStream": "EXISTING_STREAM_IN_YOUR_ACCOUNT" }, "S3": { "Bucket": "EXISTING_BUCKET" } } } } }, { "Sid": "redact-policy", "DataIdentifier": [ "arn:aws:dataprotection::aws:data-identifier/EmailAddress", "arn:aws:dataprotection::aws:data-identifier/DriversLicense-US" ], "Operation": { "Deidentify": { "MaskConfig": {} } } } ] } }

To create an account-wide subscription filter policy

The following example creates an account-wide subscription filter policy that forwards log events containing the string ERROR to a Kinesis Data Streams stream. The policy applies to all log groups in the account except for LogGroupToExclude1 and LogGroupToExclude12.

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: logs.<region>.<domain> X-Amz-Date: <DATE> Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-type;date;host;user-agent;x-amz-date;x-amz-target;x-amzn-requestid, Signature=<Signature> User-Agent: <UserAgentString> Accept: application/json Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1 Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes> Connection: Keep-Alive X-Amz-Target: Logs_20140328.PutAccountPolicy { "policyName": "ExamplePolicy", "policyType": "SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER_POLICY", "policyDocument": { "DestinationArn":"arn:aws:kinesis:region:111111111111:stream/TestStream", "RoleArn":"arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/CWLtoKinesisRole", "FilterPattern": "ERROR", "Distribution": "Random" }, "selectionCriteria": 'LogGroupName NOT IN ["LogGroupToExclude1", "LogGroupToExclude2"]' }

To create an account-wide field index policy

The following example creates an account-wide field index policy for log groups with names that start with lambda.

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: logs.<region>.<domain> X-Amz-Date: <DATE> Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-type;date;host;user-agent;x-amz-date;x-amz-target;x-amzn-requestid, Signature=<Signature> User-Agent: <UserAgentString> Accept: application/json Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1 Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes> Connection: Keep-Alive X-Amz-Target: Logs_20140328.PutAccountPolicy { "policyDocument": { "Fields": ["RequestId", "TransactionId"] }, "policyName": "LambdaIndexPolicy", "policyType" : "FIELD_INDEX_POLICY", "scope" : "ALL", "selectionCriteria": 'LogGroupNamePrefix="lambda"' }

See Also

For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific Amazon SDKs, see the following: