Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Shield - Amazon WAF, Amazon Firewall Manager, and Amazon Shield Advanced
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Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Shield

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify Shield 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 Shield, including the format of the ARNs for each of the resource types, see Actions, resources, and condition keys for Amazon Shield in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Shield 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 Shield console

To access the Amazon Shield console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the Shield 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.

Users who can access and use the Amazon console can also access the Amazon Shield console. No additional permissions are required.

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": "*" } ] }

Grant read access to your Shield Advanced protections

Amazon Shield allows cross-account resource access, but it doesn't allow you to create cross-account resource protections. You can only create protections for resources from within the account that owns those resources.

The following is an example policy that grants permissions for the shield:ListProtections action on all resources. Shield doesn't support identifying specific resources using the resource ARNs (also referred to as resource-level permissions) for some of the API actions, so you specify a wildcard character (*). This only permits access to the resources that you can retrieve through the action ListProtections.

{ "Version": "2016-06-02", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "ListProtections", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "shield:ListProtections" ], "Resource": "*" } ] }

Grant read-only access to Shield, CloudFront, and CloudWatch

The following policy grants users read-only access to Shield and associated resources, including Amazon CloudFront resources, and Amazon CloudWatch metrics. It's useful for users who need permission to view the settings in Shield protections and attacks and to monitor metrics in CloudWatch. These users can't create, update, or delete Shield resources.

{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "ProtectedResourcesReadAccess", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "cloudfront:List*", "elasticloadbalancing:List*", "route53:List*", "cloudfront:Describe*", "elasticloadbalancing:Describe*", "route53:Describe*", "cloudwatch:Describe*", "cloudwatch:Get*", "cloudwatch:List*", "cloudfront:GetDistribution*", "globalaccelerator:ListAccelerators", "globalaccelerator:DescribeAccelerator" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:*:*:*", "arn:aws:cloudfront::*:*", "arn:aws:route53:::hostedzone/*", "arn:aws:cloudwatch:*:*:*:*", "arn:aws:globalaccelerator::*:*" ] }, { "Sid": "ShieldReadOnly", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "shield:List*", "shield:Describe*", "shield:Get*" ], "Resource": "*" } ] }

Grant full access to Shield, CloudFront, and CloudWatch

The following policy lets users perform any Shield operation, perform any operation on CloudFront web distributions, and monitor metrics and a sample of requests in CloudWatch. It's useful for users who are Shield administrators.

{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "ProtectedResourcesReadAccess", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "cloudfront:List*", "elasticloadbalancing:List*", "route53:List*", "cloudfront:Describe*", "elasticloadbalancing:Describe*", "route53:Describe*", "cloudwatch:Describe*", "cloudwatch:Get*", "cloudwatch:List*", "cloudfront:GetDistribution*", "globalaccelerator:ListAccelerators", "globalaccelerator:DescribeAccelerator" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:*:*:*", "arn:aws:cloudfront::*:*", "arn:aws:route53:::hostedzone/*", "arn:aws:cloudwatch:*:*:*:*", "arn:aws:globalaccelerator::*:*" ] }, { "Sid": "ShieldFullAccess", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "shield:*" ], "Resource": "*" } ] }

We strongly recommend that you configure multi-factor authentication (MFA) for users who have administrative permissions. For more information, see Using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Devices with Amazon in the IAM User Guide.