Understanding service-linked roles in IAM Identity Center - Amazon IAM Identity Center
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Understanding service-linked roles in IAM Identity Center

Service-linked roles are predefined IAM permissions that allow IAM Identity Center to delegate and enforce which users have single sign-on access to specific Amazon Web Services accounts in your organization in Amazon Organizations. The service enables this functionality by provisioning a service-linked role in every Amazon Web Services account within its organization. The service then allows other Amazon services like IAM Identity Center to leverage those roles to perform service-related tasks. For more information, see Amazon Organizations and service-linked roles.

When you enable IAM Identity Center, IAM Identity Center creates a service-linked role in all accounts within the organization in Amazon Organizations. IAM Identity Center also creates the same service-linked role in every account that is subsequently added to your organization. This role allows IAM Identity Center to access each account's resources on your behalf. For more information, see Amazon Web Services account access.

Service-linked roles that are created in each Amazon Web Services account are named AWSServiceRoleForSSO. For more information, see Using service-linked roles for IAM Identity Center.

Notes

  • If you're signed in to the Amazon Organizations management account, it uses your currently signed-in role and not the service-linked role. This prevents the escalation of privileges.

  • When IAM Identity Center performs any IAM operations in the Amazon Organizations management account, all operations happen using the credentials of the IAM principal. This enables the logs in CloudTrail to provide visibility of who made all privilege changes in the management account.