Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Location Service

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify Amazon Location resources. They also can't perform tasks by using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or AWS API. To grant users permission to perform actions on the resources that they need, an IAM administrator can create IAM policies. The administrator can then add the IAM policies to roles, and users can assume the roles.

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

For details about actions and resource types defined by Amazon Location, including the format of the ARNs for each of the resource types, see Actions, Resources, and Condition Keys for Amazon Location Service in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Amazon Location 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 IAM Access Analyzer policy validation 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 Configuring MFA-protected API access 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 Amazon Location console

To access the Amazon Location Service console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the Amazon Location 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 (users or roles) with that policy.

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 they're trying to perform.

To ensure that users and roles can use the Amazon Location console, attach the following policy to the entities. For more information, see Adding permissions to a user in the IAM User Guide.

The following policy gives access to the Amazon Location Service console, to be able to create, delete, list and view details about Amazon Location resources in your AWS account.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "GeoPowerUser",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:*"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Alternatively, you can grant read-only permissions to facilitate read-only access. With read-only permissions, an error message will appear if the user attempts write actions such as creating or deleting resources. As an example, see Read-only policy for tracker resources

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": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Using Amazon Location Service resources in policy

Amazon Location Service uses the following prefixes for resources:

Amazon Location resource prefix
Resource	Resource prefix
Map resources	map
Place resources	place-index
Route resources	route-calculator
Tracking resources	tracker
Geofence Collection resources	geofence-collection

Use the following ARN syntax:

arn:Partition:geo:Region:Account:ResourcePrefix/ResourceName

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

Examples

• Use the following ARN to allow access to a specified map resource.

  "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:map/map-resource-name"

• To specify access to all map resources that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*):

  "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:map/*"

• Some Amazon Location actions, such as those for creating resources, can't be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

  "Resource": "*"

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

Permissions for updating device positions

To update device positions for multiple trackers, you'll want to grant a user access to one or more of your tracker resources. You will also want to allow the user to update a batch of device positions.

In this example, in addition to granting access to the Tracker1 and Tracker2 resources, the following policy grants permission to use the geo:BatchUpdateDevicePosition action against the Tracker1 and Tracker2 resources.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "UpdateDevicePositions",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:BatchUpdateDevicePosition"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:tracker/Tracker1",
        "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:tracker/Tracker2"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

If you want to limit the user to only be able to update device positions for a specific device, you can add a condition key for that device id.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "UpdateDevicePositions",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:BatchUpdateDevicePosition"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:tracker/Tracker1",
        "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:tracker/Tracker2"
      ],
      "Condition":{
        "ForAllValues:StringLike":{
          "geo:DeviceIds":[
            "deviceId"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Read-only policy for tracker resources

To create a read-only policy for all tracker resources in your AWS account, you'll need to grant access to all tracker resources. You'll also want to grant a user access to actions that allow them to get the device position for multiple devices, get the device position from a single device and get the position history.

In this example, the following policy grants permission to the following actions:

• geo:BatchGetDevicePosition to retrieve the position of multiple devices.

• geo:GetDevicePosition to retrieve the position of a single device.

• geo:GetDevicePositionHistory to retrieve the position history of a device.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "GetDevicePositions",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:BatchGetDevicePosition",
        "geo:GetDevicePosition",
        "geo:GetDevicePositionHistory"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:tracker/*"
    }
  ]
}

Policy for creating geofences

To create a policy to allow a user to create geofences, you'll need to grant access to specific actions that allow users to create one or more geofences on a geofence collection.

The policy below grants permission to the following actions on Collection:

• geo:BatchPutGeofence to create multiple geofences.

• geo:PutGeofence to create a single geofence.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "CreateGeofences",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:BatchPutGeofence",
        "geo:PutGeofence"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:geofence-collection/Collection"
    }
  ]
}

Read-only policy for geofences

To create a read-only policy for geofences stored in a geofence collection in your AWS account, you'll need to grant access to actions that read from the geofence collection storing the geofences.

The policy below grants permission to the following actions on Collection:

• geo:ListGeofences to list geofences in the specified geofence collection.

• geo:GetGeofence to retrieve a geofence from the geofence collection.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "GetGeofences",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:ListGeofences",
        "geo:GetGeofence"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:geofence-collection/Collection"
    }
  ]
}

Permissions for rendering a map resource

To grant sufficient permissions to render maps, you'll need to grant access to map tiles, sprites, glyphs, and the style descriptor:

• geo:GetMapTile retrieves map tiles used to selectively render features on a map.

• geo:GetMapSprites retrieves the PNG sprite sheet and corresponding JSON document describing offsets within it.

• geo:GetMapGlyphs retrieves the glyphs used for displaying text.

• geo:GetMapStyleDescriptor retrieves the map’s style descriptor, containing rendering rules.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "GetTiles",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:GetMapTile",
        "geo:GetMapSprites",
        "geo:GetMapGlyphs",
        "geo:GetMapStyleDescriptor"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:map/Map"
    }
  ]
}

Permissions to allow search operations

To create a policy to allow search operations, you'll first need to grant access to the place index resource in your AWS account. You'll also want to grant access to actions that let the user search using text by geocoding and search using a position by reverse geocoding.

In this example, in addition to granting access to PlaceIndex, the following policy also grants permission to the following actions:

• geo:SearchPlaceIndexForPosition allows you to search for places, or points of interest near a given position.

• geo:SearchPlaceIndexForText allows you to search for an address, name, city or region using free-form text.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Search",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:SearchPlaceIndexForPosition",
        "geo:SearchPlaceIndexForText"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:place-index/PlaceIndex"
    }
  ]
}

Read-only policy for route calculators

You can create a read-only policy to allow a user access to a route calculator resource to calculate a route.

In this example, in addition to granting access to ExampleCalculator, the following policy grants permission to the following operation:

• geo:CalculateRoute calculates a route given a departure position, destination positon, and a list of waypoint positions.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "RoutesReadOnly",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:CalculateRoute"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:accountID:route-calculator/ExampleCalculator"
    }
  ]
}

Control resource access based on condition keys

When you create an IAM policy to grant access to use geofences or device positions, you can use Condition operators for more precise control over which geofences or devices a user can access. You can do this by including the geofence id or device id in the Condition element of your policy.

The following example policy shows how you might create a policy that allows a user to update device positions for a specific device.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "UpdateDevicePositions",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:BatchUpdateDevicePosition"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:tracker/Tracker"
      ],
      "Condition":{
        "ForAllValues:StringLike":{
          "geo:DeviceIds":[
            "deviceId"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Control resource access based on tags

When you create an IAM policy to grant access to use your Amazon Location resources, you can use attribute-based access control for better control over which resources a user can modify, use, or delete. You can do this by including tag information in the Condition element of your policy to control access based on your resource tags.

The following example policy shows how you might create a policy that allows a user to create geofences. This grants the permission to the following actions to create one or more geofences on a geofence collection called Collection:

• geo:BatchPutGeofence to create multiple geofences.

• geo:PutGeofence to create a single geofence.

However, this policy uses the Condition element to grant the permission only if the Collection tag, Owner, has the value of that user's user name.

• For example, if a user named richard-roe attempts to view an Amazon Location Collection, the Collection must be tagged Owner=richard-roe or owner=richard-roe. Otherwise the user is denied access.

  Note

  The condition tag key Owner matches both Owner and owner because condition key names are not case-sensitive. For more information, see IAM JSON Policy Elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "CreateGeofencesIfOwner",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "geo:BatchPutGeofence",
        "geo:PutGeofence"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:geo:us-west-2:account-id:geofence-collection/Collection",
      "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {"geo:ResourceTag/Owner": "${aws:username}"}
      }
    }
  ]
}

For a tutorial about how to define permissions to access AWS resources based on tags, see the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide.