Understanding How IAM Works

By Ashwin Venugopal -

 





Overview

As IAM offers the infrastructure essential to control the authentication and authorization of an account, its elements given below should also be understood by everyone. 

Principal

It is a person or application that can make a request for an action or operation on an AWS resource because it is authenticated as the AWS account Root User or an IAM entity to do that. As stated before, it's strongly recommended to not use the root user credentials on daily basis, instead, create different IAM entities or support federated users or programmatic access to allow an application to access the AWS account.

Request

Whenever a Principal uses the AWS Management Console, API, or CLI, a request is sent to AWS which includes the following information-  
  1. Actions or Operations- The actions or operations to be done for the principal can be an action in the AWS Management Console, or an operation in AWS CLI or AWS API.
  2. Resources- The resource object on which the actions or operations are performed.
  3. Principal- It's a person or application that uses an entity to send a request. 
  4. Environment Data- It generally includes the information regarding the IP address, user agent, SSL enabled status, or the time of day.
  5. Resource Data- As the name suggests, it is the data related to the resource that's being requested. 

Authentication

As the principal that's using their credentials to send a request to AWS must be authenticated from the console as a root user, the sign should be done via the registered email address and password. After that, the account Id (or alias), username, and password should be given. However, in order to authenticate from the API or AWS CLI, the access key and the secret key must be provided along with the any kind of additional security related information.

Authorization

Now, the request must also be authorized to complete it. The request context's values are used by AWS to check for any policies that can be applied to the request and if one want permissions to access the AWS resources in their own account, then, only the identity-based policies are required as resource-based ones are generally used for granting cross-account access. Each and every policy is checked for its permission, and even if a single one denies action, then, AWS denies the whole request and stop evaluating it which is also known as an Explicit Deny as the requests are denied by default.

Actions or Operations

After the successful authorization and authentication of a request, the actions or operations in your request are approved by AWS. Operations are the services containing the things that can be done to a resource like- viewing, creating, editing, deleting, etc. and in order to allow a principal to perform an operation, the necessary actions must be included in the policy that can apply to the principal or the affected resource.

Resources

Finally, after approval of the operations in the request, they can be now performed on the related resources within an account. A resource is an object that exists within a service and the particular service defines a set actions that can performed on each resource. However, if a request to perform an unrelated action on a resource is made, it is denied instantly.

























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deployment (Part 3)

By Ashwin Venugopal -
Image
  To read part 1, please click  here To read part 2, please click  here Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) MMA is used across multiple Microsoft solutions and has undergone a few name changes as its features and functionality have evolved. If it is being considered to be used, then following areas should be covered during a Microsoft Sentinel deployment project: Consider the timelines and the strategy for a migration to AMA (Azure Monitor Agent) before the MMA end-of-life.  Consider the central deployment and management methodology for MMA. Determine which endpoints are in scope for deployment as these affect the log ingestion volume significantly.  Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) Organizations with MMA as the main Microsoft Sentinel agent should start planning the migration to AMA as soon as possible to avoid a rushed migration. One of the main advantages of AMA is the ability to control the log collection policy centrally and apply different policies against different...
Read more

Deployment (Part 1)

By Ashwin Venugopal -
Image
  To read part 2, please click  here To read part 3, please click  here Azure Resources Microsoft Sentinel needs following resources to be created: Subscription (if a dedicated subscription(s) will be used) Resource group(s) Log Analytics workspace(s) Automation rules/playbook Alert rules Workbooks Microsoft Sentinel offers hundreds of alert rules, workbooks, and automation playbook templates along with hunting scripts. The templates can be used to activate/deploy schedule alerts, create customized dashboards, create automation playbooks and perform threat-hunting activities. Generally, once deployed, the resources created have to be adjusted to match the existing environment, configure local credentials, etc. Methods of deployment: Manual- Administrator can manually configures the Microsoft Sentinel resources with the help of Azure portal. Any manual process has the inherent risks of human operator error, lack of compliance with potential change control procedures, and u...
Read more

Project Resourcing (Part 2)

By Ashwin Venugopal -
Image
  To read part 1, please click  here Engineering - SIEM The SIEM engineers configures Microsoft Sentinel, including Log Analytics, Logic Apps, workbooks, and playbooks. They are also responsible for the following high-level tasks: Initial configuration of Azure tenant, including provisioning required resources, assigning access roles, and configuring workspace parameters like log retention, resource tagging, and blueprints.  Deployment and configuration of syslog/CEF log collection agents in appropriate locations to collect logs from on-premises devices. Generally, it will be joint effort of both system engineer and SIEM engineer, involving configuration and potential troubleshooting.  Working with system owners to enable log forwarding and configuring any required parsing of log data in Log Analytics.  Working with security operations to create and deploy KQL analytic rules to offer detections for SOC/Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSRIT) use. Tuning...
Read more