AWS Health identity-based policy examples - AWS Health
Policy best practicesUsing the consoleAllow users to view their own permissionsAccessing the AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health APIResource- and action-based conditions

AWS Health identity-based policy examples

By default, IAM users and roles don't have permission to create or modify AWS Health resources. They also can't perform tasks using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS API. An IAM administrator must create IAM policies that grant users and roles permission to perform specific API operations on the specified resources they need. The administrator must then attach those policies to the IAM users or groups that require those permissions.

To learn how to create an IAM identity-based policy using these example JSON policy documents, see Creating Policies on the JSON Tab in the IAM User Guide.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete AWS Health resources in your account. These actions can incur costs for your AWS account. When you create or edit identity-based policies, follow these guidelines and recommendations:

  • Get started with AWS managed policies and move toward least-privilege permissions – To get started granting permissions to your users and workloads, use the AWS managed policies that grant permissions for many common use cases. They are available in your AWS account. We recommend that you reduce permissions further by defining AWS customer managed policies that are specific to your use cases. For more information, see AWS managed policies or AWS managed policies for job functions in the IAM User Guide.

  • Apply least-privilege permissions – When you set permissions with IAM policies, grant only the permissions required to perform a task. You do this by defining the actions that can be taken on specific resources under specific conditions, also known as least-privilege permissions. For more information about using IAM to apply permissions, see Policies and permissions in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

  • Use conditions in IAM policies to further restrict access – You can add a condition to your policies to limit access to actions and resources. For example, you can write a policy condition to specify that all requests must be sent using SSL. You can also use conditions to grant access to service actions if they are used through a specific AWS service, such as AWS CloudFormation. For more information, see IAM JSON policy elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

  • Use IAM Access Analyzer to validate your IAM policies to ensure secure and functional permissions – IAM Access Analyzer validates new and existing policies so that the policies adhere to the IAM policy language (JSON) and IAM best practices. IAM Access Analyzer provides more than 100 policy checks and actionable recommendations to help you author secure and functional policies. For more information, see Validate policies with IAM Access Analyzer in the IAM User Guide.

  • Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) – If you have a scenario that requires IAM users or a root user in your AWS account, turn on MFA for additional security. To require MFA when API operations are called, add MFA conditions to your policies. For more information, see Secure API access with MFA in the IAM User Guide.

For more information about best practices in IAM, see Security best practices in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Using the AWS Health console

To access the AWS Health console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the AWS Health resources in your AWS account. If you create an identity-based policy that is more restrictive than the minimum required permissions, the console won't function as intended for entities (IAM users or roles) with that policy.

To ensure that those entities can still use the AWS Health console, you can attach the following AWS managed policy, AWSHealthFullAccess.

The AWSHealthFullAccess policy grants an entity full access to the following:

  • Enable or disable the AWS Health organizational view feature for all accounts in an AWS organization

  • The AWS Health Dashboard in the AWS Health console

  • AWS Health API operations and notifications

  • View information about accounts that are part of your AWS organization

  • View the organizational units (OU) of the management account

Example : AWSHealthFullAccess
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "organizations:EnableAWSServiceAccess",
                "organizations:DisableAWSServiceAccess"         
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "organizations:ServicePrincipal": "health.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "health:*",
                "organizations:DescribeAccount",    
                "organizations:ListAccounts",
                "organizations:ListDelegatedAdministrators",
                "organizations:ListParents"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "iam:AWSServiceName": "health.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}
Note

You can also use the Health_OrganizationsServiceRolePolicy AWS managed policy, so that AWS Health can view events for other accounts in your organization. For more information, see Using service-linked roles for AWS Health.

You don't need to allow minimum console permissions for users that are making calls only to the AWS CLI or the AWS API. Instead, allow access to only the actions that match the API operation that you're trying to perform.

For more information, see Adding Permissions to a User in the IAM User Guide.

Allow users to view their own permissions

This example shows how you might create a policy that allows IAM users to view the inline and managed policies that are attached to their user identity. This policy includes permissions to complete this action on the console or programmatically using the AWS CLI or AWS API.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "ViewOwnUserInfo",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetUserPolicy",
                "iam:ListGroupsForUser",
                "iam:ListAttachedUserPolicies",
                "iam:ListUserPolicies",
                "iam:GetUser"
            ],
            "Resource": ["arn:aws:iam::*:user/${aws:username}"]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "NavigateInConsole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetGroupPolicy",
                "iam:GetPolicyVersion",
                "iam:GetPolicy",
                "iam:ListAttachedGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListPolicyVersions",
                "iam:ListPolicies",
                "iam:ListUsers"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Accessing the AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health API

The AWS Health Dashboard is available for all AWS accounts. The AWS Health API is available only to accounts with a Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, or Enterprise Support plan. For more information, see Support.

You can use IAM to create entities (users, groups, or roles), and then give those entities permissions to access the AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health API.

By default, IAM users don't have access to the AWS Health Dashboard or the AWS Health API. You give users access to your account's AWS Health information by attaching IAM policies to a single user, a group of users, or a role. For more information, see Identities (Users, Groups, and Roles) and Overview of IAM Policies.

After you create IAM users, you can give those users individual passwords. Then, they can sign in to your account and view AWS Health information by using an account-specific sign-in page. For more information, see How Users Sign In to Your Account.

Note

An IAM user with permissions to view AWS Health Dashboard has read-only access to health information across all AWS services on the account, which can include, but is not limited to, AWS resource IDs such as Amazon EC2 instance IDs, EC2 instance IP addresses, and general security notifications.

For example, if an IAM policy grants access only to AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health API, then the user or role that the policy applies to can access all information posted about AWS services and related resources, even if other IAM policies don't allow that access.

You can use two groups of APIs for AWS Health.

For more information about the available API operations, see the AWS Health API Reference.

Individual actions

You can set the Action element of an IAM policy to health:Describe*. This allows access to the AWS Health Dashboard and AWS Health. AWS Health supports access control to events based on the eventTypeCode and service.

Describe access

This policy statement grants access to AWS Health Dashboard and any of the Describe* AWS Health API operations. For example, an IAM user with this policy can access the AWS Health Dashboard in the AWS Management Console and call the AWS Health DescribeEvents API operation.

Example : Describe access
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
  {
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
      "health:Describe*"
    ],
    "Resource": "*"
  }]
}

Deny access

This policy statement denies access to AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health API. An IAM user with this policy can't view the AWS Health Dashboard in the AWS Management Console and can't call any of the AWS Health API operations.

Example : Deny access
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
  {
    "Effect": "Deny",
    "Action": [
      "health:*"
    ],
    "Resource": "*"
  }]
}

Organizational view

If you want to enable organizational view for AWS Health, you must allow access to the AWS Health and AWS Organizations actions.

The Action element of an IAM policy must include the following permissions:

  • iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole

  • organizations:EnableAWSServiceAccess

  • organizations:DescribeAccount

  • organizations:DisableAWSServiceAccess

  • organizations:ListAccounts

  • organizations:ListDelegatedAdministrators

  • organizations:ListParents

To understand the exact permissions needed for each APIs, see Actions Defined by AWS Health APIs and Notifications in the IAM User Guide.

Note

You must use credentials from the management account for an organization to access the AWS Health APIs for AWS Organizations. For more information, see Aggregating AWS Health events across accounts.

Allow access to AWS Health organizational view

This policy statement grants access to all AWS Health and AWS Organizations actions that you need for the organizational view feature.

Example : Allow AWS Health organizational view access
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "organizations:EnableAWSServiceAccess",
                "organizations:DisableAWSServiceAccess"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "organizations:ServicePrincipal": "health.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "health:*",
                "organizations:DescribeAccount",
                "organizations:ListAccounts",
                "organizations:ListDelegatedAdministrators",  
                "organizations:ListParents"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::*:role/aws-service-role/health.amazonaws.com/AWSServiceRoleForHealth*"
        }
    ]
}

Deny access to AWS Health organizational view

This policy statement denies access to the AWS Organizations actions but allows access to the AWS Health actions for an individual account.

Example : Deny AWS Health organizational view access
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "health:*"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "organizations:EnableAWSServiceAccess",
                "organizations:DisableAWSServiceAccess"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "organizations:ServicePrincipal": "health.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "organizations:DescribeAccount",
                "organizations:ListAccounts",
                "organizations:ListDelegatedAdministrators",
                "organizations:ListParents"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::*:role/aws-service-role/health.amazonaws.com/AWSServiceRoleForHealth*"
        }
    ]
}
Note

If the user or group that you want to give permissions to already has an IAM policy, you can add the AWS Health-specific policy statement to that policy.

Resource- and action-based conditions

AWS Health supports IAM conditions for the DescribeAffectedEntities and DescribeEventDetails API operations. You can use resource- and action-based conditions to restrict events that the AWS Health API sends to a user, group, or role.

To do so, update the Condition block of the IAM policy or set the Resource element. You can use String Conditions to restrict access based on certain AWS Health event fields.

You can use the following fields when you specify an AWS Health event in your policy:

  • eventTypeCode

  • service

Notes
Example : Action-based condition

This policy statement grants access to AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health Describe* API operations, but denies access to any AWS Health events that relate to Amazon EC2.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "health:Describe*",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "health:DescribeAffectedEntities",
                "health:DescribeEventDetails"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "health:service": "EC2"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}
Example : Resource-based condition

The following policy has the same effect, but uses the Resource element instead.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
  {
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
      "health:Describe*"
    ],
    "Resource": "*"
  },
  {
    "Effect": "Deny",
    "Action": [
      "health:DescribeEventDetails",
      "health:DescribeAffectedEntities"
    ],
    "Resource": "arn:aws:health:*::event/EC2/*/*"
  }]
}
Example : eventTypeCode condition

This policy statement grants access to AWS Health Dashboard and the AWS Health Describe* API operations, but denies access to any AWS Health events with the eventTypeCode that matches AWS_EC2_*.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "health:Describe*",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "health:DescribeAffectedEntities",
                "health:DescribeEventDetails"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringLike": {
                    "health:eventTypeCode": "AWS_EC2_*"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}
Important

If you call the DescribeAffectedEntities and DescribeEventDetails operations and don't have permission to access the AWS Health event, the AccessDeniedException error appears. For more information, see Troubleshooting AWS Health identity and access.