Enabling and disabling policy types

Enabling a policy type

Before you can create and attach a policy to your organization, you must enable that policy type for use. Enabling a policy type is a one-time task on the organization root. You can enable a policy type from only the organization's management account.

Minimum permissions

To enable a policy type, you need permission to run the following actions:

• organizations:EnablePolicyType

• organizations:DescribeOrganization – required only when using the Organizations console

• organizations:ListRoots – required only when using the Organizations console

AWS Management Console

To enable a policy type

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the Policies page, choose the name of the policy type that you want to enable.

3. On the policy type page, choose Enable policy type.

   The page is replaced by a list of the available policies of the specified type.

AWS CLI & AWS SDKs

To enable a policy type

You can use one of the following commands to enable a policy type:

• AWS CLI: enable-policy-type

  The following example shows how to enable backup policies for your organization. Note that you must specify the ID of your organization's root.

  $ aws organizations enable-policy-type \
      --root-id r-a1b2 \
      --policy-type BACKUP_POLICY
  {
      "Root": {
          "Id": "r-a1b2",
          "Arn": "arn:aws:organizations::123456789012:root/o-aa111bb222/r-a1b2",
          "Name": "Root",
          "PolicyTypes": [
              {
                  "Type": "BACKUP_POLICY",
                  "Status": "ENABLED"
              }
          ]
      }
  }

  The list of PolicyTypes in the output now includes the specified policy type with the Status of ENABLED.

• AWS SDKs: EnablePolicyType

Disabling a policy type

If you no longer want to use a certain policy type in your organization, you can disable that type to prevent its accidental use. You can disable a policy type from only the organization's management account.

Important

• When you disable a policy type, all policies of the specified type are automatically detached from all entities in the organization root. The policies are not deleted.

• (Service control policy type only) If you re-enable the SCP policy type later, all entities in the organization root are initially attached to only the default FullAWSAccess SCP. Attachments of SCPs to entities are lost when the SCPs are disabled in the organization. If you later want to re-enable SCPs, you must reattach them to the organization's root, OUs, and accounts, as appropriate.

Minimum permissions

To disable SCPs, you need permission to run the following actions:

• organizations:DisablePolicyType

• organizations:DescribeOrganization – required only when using the Organizations console

• organizations:ListRoots – required only when using the Organizations console

AWS Management Console

To disable a policy type

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the Policies page, choose the name of the policy type that you want to disable.

3. On the policy type page, choose Disable policy type.

4. On the confirmation dialog box, enter the word disable, and then choose Disable.

   The list of available policies of the specified type disappears.

AWS CLI & AWS SDKs

To disable a policy type

You can use one of the following commands to disable a policy type:

• AWS CLI: disable-policy-type

  The following example shows how to disable backup policies for your organization. Note that you must specify the ID of your organization's root.

  $ aws organizations disable-policy-type \
      --root-id r-a1b2 \
      --policy-type BACKUP_POLICY
  {
      "Root": {
          "Id": "r-a1b2",
          "Arn": "arn:aws:organizations::123456789012:root/o-aa111bb222/r-a1b2",
          "Name": "Root",
          "PolicyTypes": []
      }
  }

  The list of PolicyTypes in the output no longer includes the specified policy type.

• AWS SDKs: DisablePolicyType