How Security Lake works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Security Lake, learn what IAM features are available to use with Security Lake.

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

Identity-based policies for Security Lake

Supports identity-based policies: Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. You can't specify the principal in an identity-based policy because it applies to the user or role to which it is attached. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Security Lake supports identity-based policies. For more information, see Identity-based policy examples for Security Lake.

Resource-based policies within Security Lake

Supports resource-based policies: Yes

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 Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

The Security Lake service creates resource-based policies for the Amazon S3 buckets that store your data. You don't attach these resource-based policies to your S3 buckets. Security Lake automatically creates these policies on your behalf.

An example resource is an S3 bucket with an Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of arn:aws:s3:::aws-security-data-lake-{region}-{bucket-identifier}. In this example, region is a specific AWS Region where you've enabled Security Lake, and bucket-identifier is a Regionally unique alphanumeric string that Security Lake assigns to the bucket. Security Lake creates the S3 bucket to store data from that Region. The resource policy defines which principals can perform actions on the bucket. Here's a sample resource-based policy (bucket policy) that Security Lake attaches to the bucket:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": "s3:*",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::aws-security-data-lake-{region}-{bucket-identifier}/*",
                "arn:aws:s3:::aws-security-data-lake-{region}-{bucket-identifier}"
            ],
            "Condition": {
                "Bool": {
                    "aws:SecureTransport": "false"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "PutSecurityLakeObject",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": "securitylake.amazonaws.com"
            },
            "Action": "s3:PutObject",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::aws-security-data-lake-{region}-{bucket-identifier}/*",
                "arn:aws:s3:::aws-security-data-lake-{region}-{bucket-identifier}"
            ],
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:SourceAccount": "{DA-AccountID}",
                    "s3:x-amz-acl": "bucket-owner-full-control"
                },
                "ArnLike": {
                    "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:securitylake:us-east-1:{DA-AccountID}:*"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

To learn more about resource-based policies, see Identity-based policies and resource-based policies in the IAM User Guide.

Policy actions for Security Lake

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.

For a list of Security Lake actions, see Actions defined by Amazon Security Lake in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in Security Lake use the following prefix before the action:

securitylake

For example, to grant a user permission to access information about a specific subscriber, include the securitylake:GetSubscriber action in the policy assigned to that user. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. Security Lake defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [
      "securitylake:action1",
      "securitylake:action2"
]

To view examples of Security Lake identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for Security Lake.

Policy resources for Security Lake

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": "*"

Security Lake defines the following resource types: subscriber, and the data lake configuration for an AWS account in a particular AWS Region. You can specify these types of resources in policies by using ARNs.

For a list of Security Lake resource types and the ARN syntax for each one, see Resource types defined by Amazon Security Lake in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn which actions you can specify for each type of resource, see Actions defined by Amazon Security Lake in the Service Authorization Reference.

To view examples of Security Lake identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for Security Lake.

Policy condition keys for Security Lake

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.

For a list of Security Lake condition keys, see Condition keys for Amazon Security Lake in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn which actions and resources you can use a condition key with, see Actions defined by Amazon Security Lake in the Service Authorization Reference. For examples of policies that use condition keys, see Identity-based policy examples for Security Lake.

Access control lists (ACLs) in Security Lake

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.

Security Lake doesn't support ACLs, which means you can't attach an ACL to a Security Lake resource.

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) with Security Lake

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 Define permissions with ABAC authorization 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.

You can attach tags to Security Lake resources—subscribers, and the data lake configuration for an AWS account in individual AWS Regions. You can also control access to these types of resources by providing tag information in the Condition element of a policy. For information about tagging Security Lake resources, see Tagging Security Lake resources. For an example of an identity-based policy that controls access to a resource based on the tags for that resource, see Identity-based policy examples for Security Lake.

Using temporary credentials with Security Lake

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 Switch from a user to an IAM 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.

Security Lake supports the use of temporary credentials.

Forward access sessions for Security Lake

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

When you use an IAM user or role to perform actions in AWS, you are considered a principal. When you use some services, you might perform an action that then initiates another action in a different service. FAS uses the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. FAS requests are only made when a service receives a request that requires interactions with other AWS services or resources to complete. In this case, you must have permissions to perform both actions. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Some Security Lake actions require permissions for additional, dependent actions in other AWS services. For a list of these actions, see Actions defined by Amazon Security Lake in the Service Authorization Reference.

Service roles for Security Lake

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

Security Lake doesn't assume or use service roles. However, related services such as Amazon EventBridge, AWS Lambda, and Amazon S3 assume service roles when you use Security Lake. To perform actions on your behalf, Security Lake uses a service-linked role.

Service-linked roles for Security Lake

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

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

Security Lake uses an IAM service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForAmazonSecurityLake. The Security Lake service-linked role grants permissions to operate a security data lake service on behalf of customers. This service-linked role is an IAM role that's linked directly to Security Lake. It's predefined by Security Lake, and it includes all the permissions that Security Lake requires to call other AWS services on your behalf. Security Lake uses this service-linked role in all the AWS Regions where Security Lake is available.

For details about creating or managing the Security Lake service-linked role, see Using service-linked roles for Security Lake.