Define permission guardrails for your organization

Defining permission guardrails ensures that there are common, organization-wide controls restricting access to sensitive resources, regardless of individual user or group permissions. These guardrails help enforce security boundaries and prevent accidental or malicious actions, such as unauthorized region use or deletion of critical resources. By implementing guardrails, you can enforce consistent security policies across your AWS environment.

1. Establish organization-wide controls: Use permission guardrails to define security boundaries for your entire organization. These controls apply to all identities and ensure that key security policies, such as restrictions on resource modifications or region usage, are consistently enforced.
2. Restrict access to specific AWS Regions: Implement region-based guardrails to limit the resources that can be deployed in specific AWS Regions. This ensures that workloads remain within approved regions, reducing the risk of data sovereignty or compliance violations.
3. Protect critical resources: Use guardrails to prevent the deletion or modification of essential resources. For example, restrict operators from deleting critical IAM roles, such as those used by your central security team, to prevent accidental disruptions to your security operations.
4. Use service control policies (SCPs): Leverage AWS Organizations and SCPs to apply guardrails across all AWS accounts in your organization. SCPs allow you to define restrictions at the organizational level, ensuring that users cannot override these controls, regardless of their permissions.
5. Continuously monitor and enforce guardrails: Regularly audit and monitor guardrail enforcement to ensure that no user or system has bypassed the established restrictions. AWS Config and AWS CloudTrail can help detect any actions that attempt to exceed the defined guardrails.

Supporting Questions:

• What organizational resources and operations require guardrails to prevent unauthorized modifications?
• How do you restrict access to specific AWS Regions or prevent actions such as deleting critical resources?
• What processes are in place to monitor and enforce permission guardrails?

Roles and Responsibilities:

Security Architect:

• Responsibilities:
  • Define permission guardrails that protect critical resources and enforce security boundaries across the organization.
  • Use service control policies (SCPs) to apply organization-wide access restrictions.
  • Regularly review and update guardrails to account for new security risks and operational changes.

Cloud Administrator:

• Responsibilities:
  • Implement and manage SCPs to enforce guardrails across AWS accounts.
  • Ensure that guardrails are applied to restrict access to specific AWS Regions or critical resources.
  • Monitor compliance with guardrails using AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config, addressing any detected violations.

Artefacts:

• Permission Guardrail Policies: Documentation outlining the organization-wide controls that restrict access to specific actions, resources, or AWS Regions.
• Service Control Policies (SCPs): SCPs applied to AWS Organizations accounts to enforce guardrails, restricting access at the organizational level.
• Guardrail Compliance Reports: Reports from AWS Config and CloudTrail that audit compliance with established permission guardrails, highlighting any violations or attempts to bypass restrictions.

Relevant AWS Services:

AWS Identity Services:

• AWS Organizations with Service Control Policies (SCPs): SCPs are used to define and enforce permission guardrails across all AWS accounts in your organization, restricting actions that are not allowed for any user or service.
• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): IAM policies can be used alongside SCPs to enforce least privilege access while adhering to organizational guardrails.

Monitoring and Compliance Services:

• AWS CloudTrail: Logs actions taken within your AWS environment, helping detect any attempts to violate guardrails or modify critical resources.
• AWS Config: Monitors resource configurations and evaluates compliance with guardrail policies, ensuring that restrictions are continuously enforced across the organization.