Required roles and permissions for CloudWatch canaries

Both the users who create and manage canaries, and the canaries themselves, must have certain permissions.

AWS managed policies for CloudWatch Synthetics

To add permissions to users, groups, and roles, it is easier to use AWS managed policies than to write policies yourself. It takes time and expertise to create IAM customer managed policies that provide your team with only the permissions they need. To get started quickly, you can use our AWS managed policies. These policies cover common use cases and are available in your AWS account. For more information about AWS managed policies, see AWS managed policies AWS managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

AWS services maintain and update AWS managed policies. You can't change the permissions in AWS managed policies. Services occasionally change the permissions in an AWS managed policy. This type of update affects all identities (users, groups, and roles) where the policy is attached.

CloudWatch Synthetics updates to AWS managed policies

View details about updates to AWS managed policies for CloudWatch Synthetics since this service began tracking these changes. For automatic alerts about changes to this page, subscribe to the RSS feed on the CloudWatch Document history page.

Change	Description	Date
Redundant actions removed from CloudWatchSyntheticsFullAccess	CloudWatch Synthetics removed the s3:PutBucketEncryption and lambda:GetLayerVersionByArn actions from CloudWatchSyntheticsFullAccess policy because those actions were redundant with other permissions in the policy. The removed actions did not provide any permissions, and there’s no net change to the permissions granted by the policy.	March 12, 2021
CloudWatch Synthetics started tracking changes	CloudWatch Synthetics started tracking changes for its AWS managed policies.	March 10, 2021

CloudWatchSyntheticsFullAccess

Here are the contents of the CloudWatchSyntheticsFullAccess policy:

{
   "Version":"2012-10-17",
   "Statement":[
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "synthetics:*"
         ],
         "Resource":"*"
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "s3:CreateBucket",
            "s3:PutEncryptionConfiguration"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:s3:::cw-syn-results-*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "iam:ListRoles",
            "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
            "s3:GetBucketLocation",
            "xray:GetTraceSummaries",
            "xray:BatchGetTraces",
            "apigateway:GET"
         ],
         "Resource":"*"
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "s3:GetObject",
            "s3:ListBucket"
         ],
         "Resource":"arn:aws:s3:::cw-syn-*"
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "s3:GetObjectVersion"
         ],
         "Resource":"arn:aws:s3:::aws-synthetics-library-*"
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "iam:PassRole"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:iam::*:role/service-role/CloudWatchSyntheticsRole*"
         ],
         "Condition":{
            "StringEquals":{
               "iam:PassedToService":[
                  "lambda.amazonaws.com",
                  "synthetics.amazonaws.com"
               ]
            }
         }
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "iam:GetRole"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:iam::*:role/service-role/CloudWatchSyntheticsRole*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
            "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics"
         ],
         "Resource":"*"
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "cloudwatch:PutMetricAlarm",
            "cloudwatch:DeleteAlarms"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:cloudwatch:*:*:alarm:Synthetics-*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarms"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:cloudwatch:*:*:alarm:*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "lambda:CreateFunction",
            "lambda:AddPermission",
            "lambda:PublishVersion",
            "lambda:UpdateFunctionConfiguration",
            "lambda:GetFunctionConfiguration"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:lambda:*:*:function:cwsyn-*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "lambda:GetLayerVersion",
            "lambda:PublishLayerVersion"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:aws:lambda:*:*:layer:cwsyn-*",
            "arn:aws:lambda:*:*:layer:Synthetics:*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
            "ec2:DescribeSubnets",
            "ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "sns:ListTopics"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "*"
         ]
      },
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Action":[
            "sns:CreateTopic",
            "sns:Subscribe",
            "sns:ListSubscriptionsByTopic"
         ],
         "Resource":[
            "arn:*:sns:*:*:Synthetics-*"
         ]
      }
   ]
}

CloudWatchSyntheticsReadOnlyAccess

Here are the contents of the CloudWatchSyntheticsReadOnlyAccess policy:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "synthetics:Describe*",
                "synthetics:Get*",
                "synthetics:List*"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}