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1.15 Ensure Identity and Access Management (IAM) Users Receive Permissions Only Through Groups (Automated)​

Profile Applicability​

• Level 1

Description​

IAM policies grant IAM users access to services, functions, and data. There are three ways to define policies for a user: 1) Edit the user policy directly - known as an inline (or user) policy; 2) attach a policy directly to a user; 3) add the user to an IAM group that has an attached policy.

Best practices recommend the third implementation.

Rationale​

Assigning IAM policy only through groups unifies permissions management to a single, flexible layer consistent with organizational functional roles. By unifying permissions management, the likelihood of excessive permissions is reduced.

Audit​

Perform the following to determine if an inline policy is set or a policy is directly attached to users:

  1. Run the following to get a list of IAM users:
 aws iam list-users --query 'Users[*].UserName' --output text
  1. For each user returned, run the following command to determine if any policies are attached to them:
 aws iam list-attached-user-policies --user-name <iam_user>
 aws iam list-user-policies --user-name <iam_user>
  1. If any policies are returned, the user has an inline policy or direct policy attachment.

Remediation​

Perform the following to create an IAM group and assign a policy to it:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
  2. In the navigation pane, click Groups and then click Create New Group.
  3. In the Group Name box, type the name of the group and then click Next Step.
  4. In the list of policies, select the checkbox for each policy that you want to apply to all members of the group. Then click Next Step.
  5. Click Create Group.

Perform the following to add a user to a given group:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
  2. In the navigation pane, click Groups.
  3. Select the group to add a user to.
  4. Click Add Users To Group.
  5. Select the users to add to the group.
  6. Click Add Users.

Perform the following to remove a direct association between a user and policy:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
  2. In the left navigation pane, click Users.
  3. For each user:
  • Select the user
  • Click the Permissions tab
  • Expand Permissions policies
  • Click X for each policy; then click Detach or Remove (depending on policy type)

References​

CCE-78912-3
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/access_policies_managed-vs-inline.html

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