AWS Resource Explorer identity-based policy examples

By default, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) principals, such as roles, groups, and users, don't have permission to create or modify Resource Explorer resources. They also can't perform tasks using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or AWS API. An IAM administrator must create IAM policies that grant principals permission to perform specific API operations on the specified resources they need. Then, the administrator must assign those policies to the IAM principals that require those permissions.

To provide access, add permissions to your users, groups, or roles:

To learn how to create an IAM identity-based policy using these example JSON policy documents, see Creating Policies on the JSON Tab in the IAM User Guide.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Resource Explorer 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 Resource Explorer console

For principals to search in the AWS Resource Explorer console, they must have a minimum set of permissions. If you don't create an identity-based policy with the minimum required permissions, then the Resource Explorer console doesn't function as intended for principals in the account.

You can use the AWS managed policy named AWSResourceExplorerReadOnlyAccess to grant the ability to use the Resource Explorer console to search using any view in the account. To grant permissions to search with only a single view, see Granting access to Resource Explorer views for search, and the examples in the following two sections.

You don't need to allow minimum console permissions for principals that are making calls only to the AWS CLI or the AWS API. Instead, you can choose to grant access to only those actions that match the API operations that the principals need to perform.

Granting access to a view based on tags

In this example, you want to grant access to a Resource Explorer view in your AWS account to principals in the account. To do this you assign IAM identity-based policies to the principals that you want to be able to search in Resource Explorer. The following example IAM policy grants access to any request where the Search-Group tag attached to the calling principal exactly matches the value for that same tag attached to the view used in the request.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "resource-explorer-2:GetView",
                "resource-explorer-2:Search"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:resource-explorer-2:*:*:view/*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {"aws:ResourceTag/Search-Group": "${aws:PrincipalTag/Search-Group}"}
            }
        }
    ]
}

You can assign this policy to the IAM principals in your account. If a principal with the tag Search-Group=A attempts to search using a Resource Explorer view, the view must also be tagged Search-Group=A. If it's not, then the principal is denied access. The condition tag key Search-Group matches both Search-group and search-group because condition key names are not case-sensitive. For more information, see IAM JSON Policy Elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

Granting access to create a view based on tags

In this example, you want to allow only principals that are tagged the same as the index to be able to create views in the AWS Region that contains the index. To do this, create identity-based permissions to allow the principals to search with views.

Now you're ready to grant permissions to create a view. You can add the statements in this example to the same permission policy that you use to grant Search permissions to appropriate principals. The actions are allowed or denied based on the tags attached to the principals calling the operations and index that the view is to be associated with. The following example IAM policy denies any request to create a view when the value of the Allow-Create-View tag attached to the caller's principal doesn't exactly match the value for that same tag attached to the index in the Region in which the view is created.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": "resource-explorer-2:CreateView",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringNotEquals": {"aws:ResourceTag/Allow-Create-View": "${aws:PrincipalTag/Allow-Create-View}"}
            }
        }
    ]
}

Allow principals 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": "*"
        }
    ]
}