How AWS Well-Architected Tool works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS WA Tool, learn what IAM features are available to use with AWS WA Tool.

IAM features you can use with AWS Well-Architected Tool
IAM feature	AWS WA Tool support
Identity-based policies	Yes
Resource-based policies	No
Policy actions	Yes
Policy resources	Yes
Policy condition keys (service-specific)	Yes
ACLs	No
ABAC (tags in policies)	Yes
Temporary credentials	Yes
Principal permissions	Yes
Service roles	No
Service-linked roles	No

To get a high-level view of how AWS WA Tool and other AWS services work with most IAM features, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

AWS WA Tool identity-based policies

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. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated AWS API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

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

Resource-based policies within AWS WA Tool

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. Adding a cross-account principal to a resource-based policy is only half of establishing the trust relationship. When the principal and the resource are in different AWS accounts, an IAM administrator in the trusted account must also grant the principal entity (user or role) permission to access the resource. They grant permission by attaching an identity-based policy to the entity. However, if a resource-based policy grants access to a principal in the same account, no additional identity-based policy is required. For more information, see How IAM roles differ from resource-based policies in the IAM User Guide.

Policy actions for AWS WA Tool

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. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated AWS API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

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

Policy actions in AWS WA Tool use the following prefix before the action: wellarchitected:. For example, to allow an entity to define a workload, an administrator must attach a policy that allows wellarchitected:CreateWorkload actions. Similarly, to prevent an entity from deleting workloads, an administrator can attach a policy that denies wellarchitected:DeleteWorkload actions. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. AWS WA Tool defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To see a list of AWS WA Tool actions, see Actions Defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy resources

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. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

To see a list of AWS WA Tool resource types and their ARNs, see Resources defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool.

The AWS WA Tool workload resource has the following ARN:

arn:${Partition}:wellarchitected:${Region}:${Account}:workload/${ResourceId} 

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

The ARN can be found on the Workload properties page for a workload. For example, to specify a specific workload:

"Resource": "arn:aws:wellarchitected:us-west-2:123456789012:workload/11112222333344445555666677778888" 

To specify all workloads that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*):

"Resource": "arn:aws:wellarchitected:us-west-2:123456789012:workload/*" 

Some AWS WA Tool actions, such as those for creating and listing workloads, cannot be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "*"

To see a list of AWS WA Tool resource types and their ARNs, see Resources Defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions Defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool.

Policy condition keys for AWS WA Tool

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 (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. 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.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, AWS evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, AWS evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

AWS supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

AWS WA Tool does not provide any service-specific condition keys, but it does support using some global condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS Global Condition Context Keys in the Service Authorization Reference.

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 (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. 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.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, AWS evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, AWS evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

AWS supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

ACLs in AWS WA Tool

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.

Authorization based on AWS WA Tool tags

Supports ABAC (tags in policies)

Yes

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes. In AWS, these attributes are called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities (users or roles) and to many AWS resources. Tagging entities and resources is the first step of ABAC. Then you design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource that they are trying to access.

ABAC is helpful in environments that are growing rapidly and helps with situations where policy management becomes cumbersome.

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 What is ABAC? 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.

Using temporary credentials with AWS WA Tool

Supports temporary credentials

Yes

Some AWS services don't work when you sign in using temporary credentials. For additional information, including which AWS services work with temporary credentials, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

You are using temporary credentials if you sign in to the AWS Management Console using any method except a user name and password. For example, when you access AWS using your company's single sign-on (SSO) link, that process automatically creates temporary credentials. You also automatically create temporary credentials when you sign in to the console as a user and then switch roles. For more information about switching roles, see Switching to a role (console) in the IAM User Guide.

You can manually create temporary credentials using the AWS CLI or AWS API. You can then use those temporary credentials to access AWS. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM.

Cross-service principal permissions for AWS WA Tool

Supports principal permissions

Yes

When you use an IAM user or role to perform actions in AWS, you are considered a principal. Policies grant permissions to a principal. When you use some services, you might perform an action that then triggers another action in a different service. In this case, you must have permissions to perform both actions. To see whether an action requires additional dependent actions in a policy, see Actions, Resources, and Condition Keys for AWS Well-Architected Tool in the Service Authorization Reference.

Service roles for AWS WA Tool

Supports service roles

No

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

Service-linked roles for AWS WA Tool

Supports service-linked roles

No

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 IAM account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For details about creating or managing service-linked roles, see AWS services that work with IAM. Find a service in the table that includes a Yes in the Service-linked role column. Choose the Yes link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.