Identity-based policy examples for AWS Organizations

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify Organizations 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 Create IAM policies (console) in the IAM User Guide.

For details about actions and resource types defined by Organizations, including the format of the ARNs for each of the resource types, see Actions, resources, and condition keys for AWS Organizations in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Organizations 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:

For more information about best practices in IAM, see Security best practices in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Using the Organizations console

To access the AWS Organizations console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the Organizations 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 still use the Organizations console, also attach the Organizations AWSOrganizationsFullAccess or AWSOrganizationsReadOnlyAccess AWS managed policy to the entities. For more information, see Adding permissions to a user in the IAM User Guide.

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": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Granting full admin permissions to a user

You can create an IAM policy that grants full AWS Organizations administrator permissions to an IAM user in your organization. You can do this using the JSON policy editor in the IAM console.

To learn more about creating an IAM policy, see Creating IAM policies in the IAM User Guide.

Granting limited access by actions

If you want to grant limited permissions instead of full permissions, you can create a policy that lists individual permissions that you want to allow in the Action element of the IAM permissions policy. As shown in the following example, you can use wildcard (*) characters to grant only the Describe* and List* permissions, essentially providing read-only access to the organization.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
            "organizations:Describe*", 
            "organizations:List*" 
        ],
        "Resource": "*"
    }
}

For a list of all the permissions that are available to assign in an IAM policy, see Actions defined by AWS Organizations in the Service Authorization Reference.

Granting access to specific resources

In addition to restricting access to specific actions, you can restrict access to specific entities in your organization. The Resource elements in the examples in the preceding sections both specify the wildcard character ("*"), which means "any resource that the action can access." Instead, you can replace the "*" with the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of specific entities to which you want to allow access.

Example: Granting permissions to a single OU

The first statement of the following policy allows an IAM user read access to the entire organization, but the second statement allows the user to perform AWS Organizations administrative actions only within a single, specified organizational unit (OU). This does not extend to any child OUs. No billing access is granted. Note that this doesn't give you administrative access to the AWS accounts in the OU. It grants only permissions to perform AWS Organizations operations on the accounts within the specified OU:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "organizations:Describe*", 
        "organizations:List*" 
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "organizations:*",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:organizations::<masterAccountId>:ou/o-<organizationId>/ou-<organizationalUnitId>"
    }
  ]
}

You get the IDs for the OU and the organization from the AWS Organizations console or by calling the List* APIs. The user or group that you apply this policy to can perform any action ("organizations:*") on any entity that is directly contained in the specified OU. The OU is identified by the Amazon Resource Name (ARN).

For more information about the ARNs for various resources, see Resources types defined by AWS Organizations in the Service Authorization Reference.

Granting the ability to enable trusted access to limited service principals

You can use the Condition element of a policy statement to further limit the circumstances where the policy statement matches.

Example: Granting permissions to enable trusted access to one specified service

The following statement shows how you can restrict the ability to enable trusted access to only those services that you specify. If the user tries to call the API with a different service principal than the one for AWS IAM Identity Center, this policy doesn't match and the request is denied:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "organizations:EnableAWSServiceAccess",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": { 
                "StringEquals" : {
                    "organizations:ServicePrincipal" : "sso.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

For more information about the ARNs for various resources, see Resources types defined by AWS Organizations in the Service Authorization Reference.