How Amazon AppFlow works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Amazon AppFlow, learn what IAM features are available to use with Amazon AppFlow.

IAM features you can use with Amazon AppFlow
IAM feature	Amazon AppFlow support
Identity-based policies	Yes
Resource-based policies	No
Policy actions	Yes
Policy resources	Yes
Policy condition keys	Partial
ACLs	No
ABAC (tags in policies)	Yes
Temporary credentials	Yes
Principal permissions	Yes
Service roles	No
Service-linked roles	No

To get a high-level view of how Amazon AppFlow and other AWS services work with most IAM features, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies for Amazon AppFlow

Supports identity-based policies

Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Creating IAM policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. You can't specify the principal in an identity-based policy because it applies to the user or role to which it is attached. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Other required permissions in identity-based policies for Amazon AppFlow

Because Amazon AppFlow always encrypts data at rest and in motion, ensure that the user that is creating and running a flow has the following AWS KMS permissions in your identity-based policies.

Required AWS KMS permission	Description
kms:ListKeys	Controls permission to view the key ID and Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of all customer master keys (CMKs) in the account.
kms:DescribeKey	Controls permission to view detailed information about a CMK.
kms:ListAliases	Controls permission to view the aliases that are defined in the account. Aliases are optional friendly names that you can associate with CMKs.
kms:CreateGrant	Controls permission to add a grant to a CMK. You can use grants to add permissions without changing the key policy or IAM policy.
kms:ListGrants	Controls permission to view all grants for a CMK.

For more information about AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), see What is AWS KMS in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

For the complete list of AWS services that are integrated with AWS KMS, see AWS Service Integration.

Identity-based policy examples for Amazon AppFlow

To view examples of Amazon AppFlow identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for Amazon AppFlow.

Resource-based policies within Amazon AppFlow

Supports resource-based policies

No

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples of resource-based policies are IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource. For the resource where the policy is attached, the policy defines what actions a specified principal can perform on that resource and under what conditions. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy. Principals can include accounts, users, roles, federated users, or AWS services.

To enable cross-account access, you can specify an entire account or IAM entities in another account as the principal in a resource-based policy. Adding a cross-account principal to a resource-based policy is only half of establishing the trust relationship. When the principal and the resource are in different AWS accounts, an IAM administrator in the trusted account must also grant the principal entity (user or role) permission to access the resource. They grant permission by attaching an identity-based policy to the entity. However, if a resource-based policy grants access to a principal in the same account, no additional identity-based policy is required. For more information, see How IAM roles differ from resource-based policies in the IAM User Guide.

Policy actions for Amazon AppFlow

Supports policy actions

Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated AWS API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of Amazon AppFlow actions, see Actions defined by Amazon AppFlow in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in Amazon AppFlow use the following prefix before the action.

appflow

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [
      "appflow:CreateConnectorProfile",
      "appflow:CreateFlow"
         ]

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word Describe, include the following action.

"Action": "appflow:Describe*"

To view examples of Amazon AppFlow identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for Amazon AppFlow.

Policy resources for Amazon AppFlow

Supports policy resources

Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

To see a list of Amazon AppFlow resource types and their ARNs, see Resources defined by Amazon AppFlow in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by Amazon AppFlow.

An Amazon AppFlow connector profile has the following Amazon Resource Name (ARN) format.

arn:${Partition}:appflow:${Region}:${Account}:connectorprofile/${connector-profile-name}

An Amazon AppFlow flow has the following ARN format.

arn:${Partition}:appflow:${Region}:${Account}:flow/${flow-name}

For more information about the format of ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs).

For example, to specify the test-flow flow in your statement, use the following ARN.

"Resource": "arn:aws:appflow:us-east-1:123456789012:flow/test-flow"

To specify all flows that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "arn:aws:appflow:us-east-1:123456789012:flow/*"

Some Amazon AppFlow actions, such as those for creating resources, cannot be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "*"

Many Amazon AppFlow API actions involve multiple resources. For example, DescribeConnectorProfiles returns a list of details for specified connector profiles that are accessible by the currently logged in AWS account. So an user must have permissions to view those connector profiles. To specify multiple resources in a single statement, separate the ARNs with commas.

"Resource": [
      "resource1",
      "resource2"

To see a list of Amazon AppFlow resource types and their ARNs, see Resources defined by Amazon AppFlow in the IAM User Guide. To learn about actions with which you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by Amazon AppFlow.

Policy condition keys for Amazon AppFlow

Supports service-specific policy condition keys

Partial

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, AWS evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, AWS evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant a user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon AppFlow does not provide any service-specific condition keys, but it does support using some global condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

Access control lists (ACLs) in Amazon AppFlow

Supports ACLs

No

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) with Amazon AppFlow

Supports ABAC (tags in policies)

Yes

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes. In AWS, these attributes are called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities (users or roles) and to many AWS resources. Tagging entities and resources is the first step of ABAC. Then you design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource that they are trying to access.

ABAC is helpful in environments that are growing rapidly and helps with situations where policy management becomes cumbersome.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see What is ABAC? in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

Using temporary credentials with Amazon AppFlow

Supports temporary credentials

Yes

Some AWS services don't work when you sign in using temporary credentials. For additional information, including which AWS services work with temporary credentials, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

You are using temporary credentials if you sign in to the AWS Management Console using any method except a user name and password. For example, when you access AWS using your company's single sign-on (SSO) link, that process automatically creates temporary credentials. You also automatically create temporary credentials when you sign in to the console as a user and then switch roles. For more information about switching roles, see Switching to a role (console) in the IAM User Guide.

You can manually create temporary credentials using the AWS CLI or AWS API. You can then use those temporary credentials to access AWS. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM.

Cross-service principal permissions for Amazon AppFlow

Supports forward access sessions (FAS)

Yes

When you use an IAM user or role to perform actions in AWS, you are considered a principal. When you use some services, you might perform an action that then initiates another action in a different service. FAS uses the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. FAS requests are only made when a service receives a request that requires interactions with other AWS services or resources to complete. In this case, you must have permissions to perform both actions. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for Amazon AppFlow

Supports service roles

No

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Creating a role to delegate permissions to an AWS service in the IAM User Guide.

Service-linked roles for Amazon AppFlow

Supports service-linked roles

No

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an AWS service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your AWS account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.