Amazon Transcribe identity-based policy examples

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify Amazon Transcribe 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 Transcribe, including the format of the ARNs for each of the resource types, see Actions, resources, and condition keys for Amazon Transcribe in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Amazon Transcribe 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 AWS Management Console

To access the Amazon Transcribe console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the Amazon Transcribe 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 an entity (users and roles) can use the AWS Management Console, attach one of the following AWS-managed policies to them.

• AmazonTranscribeFullAccess: Grants full access to create, read, update, delete, and run all Amazon Transcribe resources. It also allows access to Amazon S3 buckets with transcribe in the bucket name.

• AmazonTranscribeReadOnlyAccess: Grants read-only access to Amazon Transcribe resources so that you can get and list transcription jobs and custom vocabularies.

Note

You can review the managed permission policies by signing in to the IAM AWS Management Console and searching by policy name. A search for "transcribe" returns both policies listed above (AmazonTranscribeReadOnly and AmazonTranscribeFullAccess).

You can also create your own custom IAM policies to allow permissions for Amazon Transcribe API actions. You can attach these custom policies to the entities that require those permissions.

Permissions required for IAM roles

If you create an IAM role to call Amazon Transcribe, it must have permission to access the Amazon S3 bucket. If applicable, the KMS key must also be used to encrypt the contents of the bucket. Refer to the following sections for example policies.

Trust policies

The IAM entity you use to make your transcription request must have a trust policy that enables Amazon Transcribe to assume that role. Use the following Amazon Transcribe trust policy. Note that if you're making a real-time Call Analytics request with post-call analytics enabled, you must use 'Trust policy for real-time Call Analytics'.

Trust policy for Amazon Transcribe

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": [
          "transcribe.amazonaws.com"
        ]
      },
      "Action": [
        "sts:AssumeRole"
      ],      
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "aws:SourceAccount": "111122223333"
        },
        "StringLike": {
          "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:transcribe:us-west-2:111122223333:*"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Trust policy for real-time Call Analytics

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": [
          "transcribe.streaming.amazonaws.com"
        ]
      },
      "Action": [
        "sts:AssumeRole"
      ],      
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "aws:SourceAccount": "111122223333"
        },
        "StringLike": {
          "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:transcribe:us-west-2:111122223333:*"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Amazon S3 input bucket policy

The following policy gives an IAM role permission to access files from the specified input bucket.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
            "s3:GetObject",
            "s3:ListBucket"
        ],
        "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-INPUT-BUCKET",
            "arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-INPUT-BUCKET/*"
        ]
    }
}

Amazon S3 output bucket policy

The following policy gives an IAM role permission to write files to the specified output bucket.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
            "s3:PutObject"
        ],
        "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-OUTPUT-BUCKET/*"
        ]
    }
}

Permissions required for Amazon S3 encryption keys

If you're using a KMS key to encrypt an Amazon S3 bucket, include the following in the KMS key policy. This gives Amazon Transcribe access to the contents of the bucket. For more information about allowing access to KMS keys, see Allowing external AWS accounts to access an KMS key in the AWS KMS Developer Guide.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/ExampleRole"
      },
      "Action": [
        "kms:Decrypt"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:111122223333:key/KMS-Example-KeyId"
    }
  ]
}

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": "*"
        }
    ]
}

AWS KMS encryption context policy

The following policy grants the IAM role “ExampleRole” permission to use the AWS KMS Decrypt and Encrypt operations for this particular KMS key. This policy works only for requests with at least one encryption context pair, in this case "color:indigoBlue”. For more information on AWS KMS encryption context, see AWS KMS encryption context.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
      {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Principal": {
              "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/ExampleRole"
          },
          "Action": [
              "kms:Decrypt",
              "kms:DescribeKey",
              "kms:Encrypt",
              "kms:GenerateDataKey*",
              "kms:ReEncrypt*"
          ],
          "Resource": "*",
          "Condition": {
              "StringEquals": {
                  "kms:EncryptionContext:color":"indigoBlue"
              }
           }
        }
   ]
}

Confused deputy prevention policy

Here's an example of an assume role policy that shows how you can use aws:SourceArn and aws:SourceAccount with Amazon Transcribe to prevent a confused deputy issue. For more information on confused deputy prevention, see Cross-service confused deputy prevention.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "transcribe.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": [
        "sts:AssumeRole",
      ],
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "aws:SourceAccount": "111122223333"
        },
        "StringLike": {
          "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:transcribe:us-west-2:111122223333:*"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Viewing transcription jobs based on tags

You can use conditions in your identity-based policy to control access to Amazon Transcribe resources based on tags. This example shows how you might create a policy that allows viewing a transcription job. However, permission is granted only if the transcription job tag Owner has the value of that user's user name. This policy also grants the permissions necessary to complete this action using the AWS Management Console.

You can attach this policy to the IAM entities in your account. If a role named test-role attempts to view a transcription job, the transcription job must be tagged Owner=test-role or owner=test-role (condition key names are not case-sensitive), otherwise they are denied access. For more information, see IAM JSON policy elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

For more information on tagging in Amazon Transcribe, see Tagging resources.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "ListTranscriptionJobsInConsole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "transcribe:ListTranscriptionJobs",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "ViewTranscriptionJobsIfOwner",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "transcribe:GetTranscriptionJobs",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:transcribe:*:*:transcription-job/*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {"aws:ResourceTag/Owner": "${aws:username}"}
            }
        }
    ]
}