How AWS Support works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS Support, you should understand what IAM features are available to use with AWS Support. To get a high-level view of how AWS Support and other AWS services work with IAM, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

For information about how to manage access for AWS Support using IAM, see Manage access for AWS Support.

AWS Support identity-based policies

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. AWS Support supports specific actions. To learn about the elements that you use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Actions

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.

Policy actions in AWS Support use the following prefix before the action: support:. For example, to grant someone permission to run an Amazon EC2 instance with the Amazon EC2 RunInstances API operation, you include the ec2:RunInstances action in their policy. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. AWS Support defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas as follows:

"Action": [
      "ec2:action1",
      "ec2:action2"

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

"Action": "ec2:Describe*"

To see a list of AWS Support actions, see Actions Defined by AWS Support in the IAM User Guide.

Examples

To view examples of AWS Support identity-based policies, see AWS Support identity-based policy examples.

AWS Support IAM roles

An IAM role is an entity within your AWS account that has specific permissions.

Using temporary credentials with AWS Support

You can use temporary credentials to sign in with federation, assume an IAM role, or to assume a cross-account role. You obtain temporary security credentials by calling AWS STS API operations such as AssumeRole or GetFederationToken.

AWS Support supports using temporary credentials.

Service-linked roles

Service-linked roles allow AWS services to access resources in other services to complete an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your IAM account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

AWS Support supports service-linked roles. For details about creating or managing AWS Support service-linked roles, see Using service-linked roles for AWS Support.

Service roles

This feature allows a service to assume a service role on your behalf. This role allows the service to access resources in other services to complete an action on your behalf. Service roles appear in your IAM account and are owned by the account. This means that an IAM administrator can change the permissions for this role. However, doing so might break the functionality of the service.

AWS Support supports service roles.