Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Simple Notification Service - Amazon Simple Notification Service
Policy best practicesUsing the consoleOther policy typesMultiple policy typesAllow users to view their own permissions
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Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Simple Notification Service

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify Amazon SNS resources. They also can't perform tasks by using the Amazon Web Services Management Console, Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI), or Amazon API. To grant users permission to perform actions on the resources that they need, an IAM administrator can create IAM policies. The administrator can then add the IAM policies to roles, and users can assume the roles.

To learn how to create an IAM identity-based policy by using these example JSON policy documents, see Create IAM policies (console) in the IAM User Guide.

For details about actions and resource types defined by Amazon SNS, including the format of the ARNs for each of the resource types, see Actions, Resources, and Condition Keys for Amazon Simple Notification Service in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Amazon SNS resources in your account. These actions can incur costs for your Amazon Web Services account. When you create or edit identity-based policies, follow these guidelines and recommendations:

  • Get started with Amazon managed policies and move toward least-privilege permissions – To get started granting permissions to your users and workloads, use the Amazon managed policies that grant permissions for many common use cases. They are available in your Amazon Web Services account. We recommend that you reduce permissions further by defining Amazon customer managed policies that are specific to your use cases. For more information, see Amazon managed policies or Amazon managed policies for job functions in the IAM User Guide.

  • Apply least-privilege permissions – When you set permissions with IAM policies, grant only the permissions required to perform a task. You do this by defining the actions that can be taken on specific resources under specific conditions, also known as least-privilege permissions. For more information about using IAM to apply permissions, see Policies and permissions in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

  • Use conditions in IAM policies to further restrict access – You can add a condition to your policies to limit access to actions and resources. For example, you can write a policy condition to specify that all requests must be sent using SSL. You can also use conditions to grant access to service actions if they are used through a specific Amazon Web Services service, such as Amazon CloudFormation. For more information, see IAM JSON policy elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

  • Use IAM Access Analyzer to validate your IAM policies to ensure secure and functional permissions – IAM Access Analyzer validates new and existing policies so that the policies adhere to the IAM policy language (JSON) and IAM best practices. IAM Access Analyzer provides more than 100 policy checks and actionable recommendations to help you author secure and functional policies. For more information, see Validate policies with IAM Access Analyzer in the IAM User Guide.

  • Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) – If you have a scenario that requires IAM users or a root user in your Amazon Web Services account, turn on MFA for additional security. To require MFA when API operations are called, add MFA conditions to your policies. For more information, see Secure API access with MFA in the IAM User Guide.

For more information about best practices in IAM, see Security best practices in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Using the Amazon SNS console

To access the Amazon Simple Notification Service console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the Amazon SNS resources in your Amazon Web Services account. If you create an identity-based policy that is more restrictive than the minimum required permissions, the console won't function as intended for entities (users or roles) with that policy.

You don't need to allow minimum console permissions for users that are making calls only to the Amazon CLI or the Amazon API. Instead, allow access to only the actions that match the API operation that they're trying to perform.

To ensure that users and roles can still use the Amazon SNS console, also attach the Amazon SNS ConsoleAccess or ReadOnly Amazon managed policy to the entities. For more information, see Adding permissions to a user in the IAM User Guide.

Other policy types

Amazon supports additional, less-common policy types. These policy types can set the maximum permissions granted to you by the more common policy types.

  • Permissions boundaries – A permissions boundary is an advanced feature in which you set the maximum permissions that an identity-based policy can grant to an IAM entity (IAM user or role). You can set a permissions boundary for an entity. The resulting permissions are the intersection of an entity's identity-based policies and its permissions boundaries. Resource-based policies that specify the user or role in the Principal field are not limited by the permissions boundary. An explicit deny in any of these policies overrides the allow. For more information about permissions boundaries, see Permissions boundaries for IAM entities in the IAM User Guide.

  • Service control policies (SCPs) – SCPs are JSON policies that specify the maximum permissions for an organization or organizational unit (OU) in Amazon Organizations. Amazon Organizations is a service for grouping and centrally managing multiple Amazon Web Services accounts that your business owns. If you enable all features in an organization, then you can apply service control policies (SCPs) to any or all of your accounts. The SCP limits permissions for entities in member accounts, including each Amazon Web Services account root user. For more information about Organizations and SCPs, see Service control policies in the Amazon Organizations User Guide.

  • Resource control policies (RCPs) – RCPs are JSON policies that you can use to set the maximum available permissions for resources in your accounts without updating the IAM policies attached to each resource that you own. The RCP limits permissions for resources in member accounts and can impact the effective permissions for identities, including the Amazon Web Services account root user, regardless of whether they belong to your organization. For more information about Organizations and RCPs, including a list of Amazon Web Services services that support RCPs, see Resource control policies (RCPs) in the Amazon Organizations User Guide.

  • Session policies – Session policies are advanced policies that you pass as a parameter when you programmatically create a temporary session for a role or federated user. The resulting session's permissions are the intersection of the user or role's identity-based policies and the session policies. Permissions can also come from a resource-based policy. An explicit deny in any of these policies overrides the allow. For more information, see Session policies in the IAM User Guide.

Multiple policy types

When multiple types of policies apply to a request, the resulting permissions are more complicated to understand. To learn how Amazon determines whether to allow a request when multiple policy types are involved, see Policy evaluation logic in the IAM User Guide.

Allow users to view their own permissions

This example shows how you might create a policy that allows IAM users to view the inline and managed policies that are attached to their user identity. This policy includes permissions to complete this action on the console or programmatically using the Amazon CLI or Amazon API.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "ViewOwnUserInfo",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetUserPolicy",
                "iam:ListGroupsForUser",
                "iam:ListAttachedUserPolicies",
                "iam:ListUserPolicies",
                "iam:GetUser"
            ],
            "Resource": ["arn:aws-cn:iam::*:user/${aws:username}"]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "NavigateInConsole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetGroupPolicy",
                "iam:GetPolicyVersion",
                "iam:GetPolicy",
                "iam:ListAttachedGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListPolicyVersions",
                "iam:ListPolicies",
                "iam:ListUsers"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}