How AWS Network Security Manager works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS Network Security Manager, learn what IAM features are available to use with AWS Network Security Manager.

IAM feature	AWS Network Security Manager support
Identity-based policies	Yes
Resource-based policies	No
Policy actions	Yes
Policy resources	Yes
Policy condition keys	Yes
ACLs	No
ABAC (tags in policies)	Yes
Temporary credentials	Yes
Principal permissions	Yes
Service roles	Yes
Service-linked roles	Yes

To get a high-level view of how AWS Network Security Manager 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 AWS Network Security Manager

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 Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed 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. 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.

Resource-based policies within AWS Network Security Manager

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. For more information, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

AWS Network Security Manager does not support resource-based policies.

Policy actions for AWS Network Security Manager

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

To see a list of AWS Network Security Manager actions, see Actions Defined by AWS Network Security Manager in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in AWS Network Security Manager use the following prefix before the action:

network-security-manager

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

"Action": [
      "network-security-manager:action1",
      "network-security-manager:action2"
         ]

AWS Network Security Manager defines IAM actions across its resource types. These include create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations for rules, templates, policies, scopes, and deployments, along with snapshot, tagging, administrative, synchronization status, and resource association operations.

Policy resources for AWS Network Security Manager

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. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

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

AWS Network Security Manager defines an IAM resource type for each of its resources (rule, template, policy, scope, and deployment), plus a snapshot type for each one (for example, rule-snapshot). The ARN format is:

arn:aws:network-security-manager:{region}:{account}:{resource-type}:{resource-id}

Draft ARNs append :DRAFT and snapshot ARNs append the version number (for example, :3).

Drafts are not separate IAM resource types. For authorization, a draft is treated as a child of its active resource, which is the parent. A :DRAFT-qualified ARN authorizes against the active resource, so permission to act on a draft comes from permission to act on that active resource.

Snapshots differ from drafts. Each snapshot is its own IAM resource type, so a version-qualified ARN authorizes against that snapshot resource type directly, not against the parent active resource.

Policy condition keys for AWS Network Security Manager

Supports service-specific policy condition keys: 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 Condition element specifies when statements execute based on defined criteria. 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. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of AWS Network Security Manager condition keys, see Condition Keys for AWS Network Security Manager in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions Defined by AWS Network Security Manager.

AWS Network Security Manager supports the following AWS global tag condition keys for attribute-based access control (ABAC):

• aws:ResourceTag/${TagKey}

• aws:RequestTag/${TagKey}

• aws:TagKeys

Tag-based condition keys apply to active resources and snapshots. Draft resources are not taggable and do not support aws:ResourceTag conditions.

ACLs in AWS Network Security Manager

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.

AWS Network Security Manager does not support access control lists (ACLs).

ABAC with AWS Network Security Manager

Supports ABAC (tags in policies): Yes

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities and AWS resources, then design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource.

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 Define permissions with ABAC authorization 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.

AWS Network Security Manager supports attribute-based access control using all three AWS global tag condition keys. You can restrict access to AWS Network Security Manager resources based on the tags attached to those resources.

Using temporary credentials with AWS Network Security Manager

Supports temporary credentials: Yes

Temporary credentials provide short-term access to AWS resources and are automatically created when you use federation or switch roles. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM and AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Cross-service principal permissions for AWS Network Security Manager

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

Forward access sessions (FAS) use the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for AWS Network Security Manager

Supports service roles: Yes

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 Create a role to delegate permissions to an AWS service in the IAM User Guide.

Warning

Changing the permissions for a service role might break AWS Network Security Manager functionality. Edit service roles only when AWS Network Security Manager provides guidance to do so.

Service-linked roles for AWS Network Security Manager

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

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.

AWS Network Security Manager uses a service-linked role to operate in member accounts of your organization. AWS Network Security Manager creates the service-linked role automatically when you enable the service. The role grants AWS Network Security Manager permission to manage AWS WAF and AWS Shield Advanced resources. The role also grants access to AWS Config for resource discovery and permission to perform cross-account operations.

For details about creating and managing AWS Network Security Manager service-linked roles, see Using service-linked roles for AWS Network Security Manager.