Using service-linked roles for Firewall Manager - AWS WAF, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS Shield Advanced
Service-linked role permissions for Firewall ManagerCreating a service-linked role for Firewall ManagerEditing a service-linked role for Firewall ManagerDeleting a service-linked role for Firewall ManagerSupported Regions for Firewall Manager service-linked roles

Using service-linked roles for Firewall Manager

AWS Firewall Manager uses AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service-linked roles. A service-linked role is a unique type of IAM role that is linked directly to Firewall Manager. Service-linked roles are predefined by Firewall Manager and include all the permissions that the service requires to call other AWS services on your behalf.

A service-linked role makes setting up Firewall Manager easier because you don’t have to manually add the necessary permissions. Firewall Manager defines the permissions of its service-linked roles, and unless defined otherwise, only Firewall Manager can assume its roles. The defined permissions include the trust policy and the permissions policy. That permissions policy can't be attached to any other IAM entity.

You can delete a service-linked role only after first deleting the role's related resources. This protects your Firewall Manager resources because you can't inadvertently remove permission to access the resources.

For information about other services that support service-linked roles, see AWS Services That Work with IAM and look for the services that have Yes in the Service-Linked Role column. Choose a Yes with a link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.

Service-linked role permissions for Firewall Manager

AWS Firewall Manager uses the service-linked role name AWSServiceRoleForFMS to allow Firewall Manager to call AWS services on your behalf for management of firewall policies and AWS Organizations account resources. This policy is attached to the AWS managed role AWSServiceRoleForFMS. For more information about the managed role, see AWS managed policy: FMSServiceRolePolicy.

The AWSServiceRoleForFMS service-linked role trusts the service to assume
 the role fms.amazonaws.com.

The role permissions policy allows Firewall Manager to complete the following actions on the specified resources:

  • waf - Manage AWS WAF Classic web ACLs, rule group permissions, and the web ACLs associations in your account.

  • ec2 - Manage security groups on elastic network interfaces and Amazon EC2 instances.

  • vpc - Manage subnets, route tables, tags, and endpoints in Amazon VPC.

  • wafv2 - Manage AWS WAF web ACLs, rule group permissions, and the web ACLs associations in your account.

  • cloudfront - Create web ACLs to protect CloudFront distributions.

  • config - Manage Firewall Manager-owned AWS Config rules in your account.

  • iam - Manage this service-linked role, and creates required AWS WAF and Shield service-linked roles if configuring logging for AWS WAF and Shield policies.

  • organization - Create a service-linked role owned by Firewall Manager to manage AWS Organizations resources used by Firewall Manager.

  • shield - Manage AWS Shield protections and L7 mitigation configurations for resources in your account.

  • ram - Manage AWS RAM resource sharing for DNS Firewall rule groups and Network Firewall rule groups.

  • network-firewall - Manage Firewall Manager-owned AWS Network Firewall resources and dependent Amazon VPC resources in your account.

  • route53resolver - Manage Firewall Manager-owned DNS Firewall associations in your account.

See the full policy in the IAM console: FMSServiceRolePolicy.

You must configure permissions to allow an IAM entity (such as a user, group, or role) to create, edit, or delete a service-linked role. For more information, see Service-Linked Role Permissions in the IAM User Guide.

Creating a service-linked role for Firewall Manager

You don't need to manually create a service-linked role. When you enable Firewall Manager logging on the AWS Management Console, or you make a PutLoggingConfiguration request in the Firewall Manager CLI or the Firewall Manager API, Firewall Manager creates the service-linked role for you.

You must have the iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole permission to enable logging.

If you delete this service-linked role, and then need to create it again, you can use the same process to recreate the role in your account. When you enable Firewall Manager logging, Firewall Manager creates the service-linked role for you again.

Editing a service-linked role for Firewall Manager

Firewall Manager doesn't allow you to edit the AWSServiceRoleForFMS service-linked role. After you create a service-linked role, you can't change the name of the role because various entities might reference the role. However, you can edit the description of the role using IAM. For more information, see Editing a Service-Linked Role in the IAM User Guide.

Deleting a service-linked role for Firewall Manager

If you no longer need to use a feature or service that requires a service-linked role, we recommend that you delete that role. That way you don’t have an unused entity that is not actively monitored or maintained. However, you must clean up the resources for your service-linked role before you can manually delete it.

Note

If the Firewall Manager service is using the role when you try to delete the resources, then the deletion might fail. If that happens, wait for a few minutes and try the operation again.

To delete the service-linked role using IAM

Use the IAM console, the IAM CLI, or the IAM API to delete the AWSServiceRoleForFMS service-linked role. For more information, see Deleting a Service-Linked Role in the IAM User Guide.

Supported Regions for Firewall Manager service-linked roles

Firewall Manager supports using service-linked roles in all of the regions where the service is available. For more information, see Firewall Manager endpoints and quotas.