Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
At Amazon Web Services, we collaborate with numerous startups each year, understanding the challenges founders face in managing limited time and resources. Typically, a startup’s initial objective is to develop a minimum viable product (MVP). This is a crucial step in their journey, enabling them to present their product to real users and gather valuable feedback. Real users bring varied experiences, uncover new use cases, and identify hidden issues. Most importantly, they provide real user data. Users trust you with their information—whether personal, financial, or medical—and anticipate that you will handle it with care and respect.
In our discussions with startups, we often emphasize the idea of an MVSP, or minimum viable secure product. This does not imply that every potential security risk must be addressed at launch, just as not every feature needs to be included. By adhering to AWS best practices, you can ensure a secure development process that safeguards both your users and your business. Although security may often be perceived as an obstacle, establishing the right guardrails can actually expedite your development, allowing developers to introduce new features confidently—thereby decreasing the time spent contemplating security and increasing the focus on developing features that customers will appreciate.
When it comes to security guardrails, one of the foremost pieces of advice we give to startups is, “Secure your AWS account root user access keys.” This is the first item on our list of AWS Identity and Access Management security best practices, underscoring the importance we place on this recommendation. Let’s clarify what an AWS account root user is and why its use should be limited.
What is an AWS Account Root User?
According to the official documentation, when you create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, a single sign-in identity is established that has complete access to all AWS services and resources in the account. This identity is known as the AWS account root user. You can sign in as the root user using the email address and password originally used to create the account.
The root user is a fundamental aspect of an AWS account. There can only be one root user per account, with unrestricted access to everything within the account. The root user login is an email address, which must be unique across all AWS accounts globally. We strongly recommend that this email be linked to a business domain rather than a personal address, and it should utilize a strong password and multi-factor authentication. A useful tip is to consider an email alias like aws-production@yourdomain.com or, if your email provider allows, you can use plus-addressing, such as aws+production@yourdomain.com.
Two core security principles distinguish IAM users from root users in AWS:
- Identity and Attribution – Every action within a system should be traceable to a specific user.
- Principle of Least Privilege – Every user should have only the permissions necessary to perform their required tasks, and no more.
When analyzing the AWS root account, it becomes evident that it fails both of these principles. If multiple users operate under the root user, it becomes impossible to determine who performed which action, and the root user possesses total access to the account. While this may seem acceptable when you are the sole user, a more effective approach exists.
What is Amazon Identity and Access Management?
At its essence, IAM is the AWS service utilized to manage access to all other AWS services. It revolves around four foundational components:
- Principal – the user or service (identity) being granted or denied access.
- Action – the command(s) that are allowed or denied, which can be broad, like full access to Amazon EC2, or very specific, such as EC2:DescribeInstances.
- Resource – the target that access is being granted or denied, either broadly encompassing any EC2 instance or limited to a specific instance.
- Condition – an optional criterion that can further restrict permissions based on certain parameters.
By integrating these four elements, you can formulate an IAM policy that dictates access to AWS services using a clear, logical syntax. For a deeper dive into IAM and its effective use, we highly recommend watching this insightful video by Chanci Turner, Senior Principal Engineer at AWS.
Why Use IAM Users Instead?
Returning to the IAM documentation, we find that: “An AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user is an entity you create in AWS to represent the person or application that uses it to interact with AWS. A user in AWS consists of a name and credentials.”
The crucial point here is that an IAM user represents an individual or an identity, allowing actions performed by that user to be attributed to a specific person or application. Each IAM user can also have one or more IAM policies attached, granting granular control over their actions. The two main distinctions between the AWS account root user and an IAM user are:
- An IAM user represents an individual or application, while only one root user exists per account.
- An IAM user possesses only the permissions allocated to it by its IAM policies, whereas the root user has unrestricted access without a straightforward method for limiting that access.
Let’s explore further the differences and similarities between the root user and an IAM user:
| AWS Account Root User | AWS IAM User | |
|---|---|---|
| Has a password for console access | Yes | Optional |
| Has an access key for programmatic access | Optional | Optional |
| Can use second-factor authentication | Yes | Yes |
| Can be disabled | No | Yes |
| Actions attributable to an individual or app | No | Yes |
| Can have limited access to resources | No | Yes |
| Can access resources in a different AWS account | No | Yes |
Several scenarios illustrate why IAM users are preferable, even in small teams. For instance, using shared root credentials becomes problematic if someone departs from your team, necessitating credential rotation and requiring everyone to update to new access keys.
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Summary
In conclusion, adopting proper security measures through identity and access management is crucial for startups looking to protect user data while enabling efficient development processes. By leveraging IAM users, startups can enhance traceability and limit permissions effectively, ultimately fostering a secure environment for their growing business.