AWS IAM Identity Center offers centralized access management across multiple AWS accounts and applications, simplifying user access, especially in organizations with diverse user roles and multi-account environments.
AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS Single Sign-On) is a cloud-native service for centralized access management across multiple AWS accounts and applications.
It simplifies managing user access, especially in organizations with multiple AWS accounts and diverse user roles.
Critical for “Design secure architecture using role-based access control and federated identity.”
AWS IAM Identity Center is offered at no extra charge.
AWS Organization must be configured, and IAM Identity Center must be enabled.
IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) unifies access to AWS Accounts and Cloud Applications.
IAM Identity Center is built on top of AWS IAM to provide a centralized dashboard for managing access to multiple AWS accounts and applications through various identity sources and permission sets.
IAM Identity Center allows you to create users directly within the service or connect to existing external identity providers.
IAM Identity Center integrates with various identity providers, including SAML 2.0 based providers, OpenID Connect (OIDC) based providers, and other custom options, enabling seamless identity federation.
AWS IAM Identity Center is designed to integrate external Identity Providers.
The service supports the creation of user groups, such as 'developers' or 'testers,' and the assignment of users to these groups, which simplifies permission management.
It's recommended to use groups for managing user access to AWS accounts and applications instead of individual users, as this simplifies administration.
Permission sets are predefined or custom configurations of permissions that can be assigned to groups, allowing for granular control over access levels, such as full access to development environments or read-only access to production.
Permission sets define the specific level of access users have within an AWS account.
Corporate users log in using their corporate credentials, which are then federated to access multiple AWS accounts and applications via a centralized dashboard. This provides Single Sign-On (SSO).
IAM Identity Center is built on top of AWS IAM to simplify access for multiple AWS accounts, business cloud applications (Salesforce, Office 365), and SAML-enabled custom applications.
AWS IAM Identity Center is an implementation strategy for Zero Trust Architecture in AWS, which adheres to the principle of 'never trust, always verify'.
You can customize the AWS access portal URL by entering a custom subdomain for the sign-in page where authenticated users will access their assigned AWS accounts and cloud applications.
Users sign into the AWS access portal using its URL, see their assigned AWS accounts, expand an account to view available roles (based on permission sets), and select a role to access the AWS Management Console or retrieve temporary credentials.
IAM Identity Center is the central management point for user access to AWS accounts and applications.
IAM Identity Center addresses various organizational needs for managing access to AWS resources and integrated applications.
Used for centralizing workforce access across multiple AWS accounts.
Facilitates federating access for contractors or external partners.
Provides Single Sign-On (SSO) access to third-party tools such as Atlassian, Zoom, and Salesforce.
Enforces least privilege access across organizations using permission sets.
Choosing the appropriate method for managing access to multiple AWS accounts involves evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of IAM Identity Center against traditional IAM Role Federation with AWS Security Token Service (STS).
| Option |
Advantages (Pros) |
Disadvantages (Cons) |
| Centralized access management, UI-based role management, federation support, ideal for organizational control. Simplifies multi-account setup and management. |
Requires an AWS Organization to be set up. |
| None |
Requires manual configuration per account, complex setup for multiple accounts, and manual user-to-role mapping. |
ABAC with IAM Identity Center enables dynamic and scalable access control by leveraging attributes (tags) from identity sources.
ABAC uses attributes (tags) passed from identity sources (like Azure AD, Okta) to IAM roles to control access dynamically.
Assign attributes (e.g., job_role with values like developer, tester) to users in the corporate identity provider.
Configure IAM Identity Center to pass these attributes as session tags to AWS.
Create IAM policies with a Condition block that matches these session tags to grant or deny access.
Scales easily with growing teams.
Reduces administrative overhead by eliminating manual role mapping.
Automatically enforces least privilege based on identity attributes.
Ideal for multi-account or multi-team environments.
AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) provides a centralized console for managing user access, accounts, and permissions with granular control.
You manage assigned accounts and the permissions associated with those accounts for users accessing the AWS access portal through AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO).
Prerequisites
- AWS Organization must be configured
- IAM Identity Center must be enabled
1
Define and Create Groups
💡 Groups simplify access management. It's recommended to use groups for managing user access to AWS accounts and applications instead of individual users, as this simplifies administration.
2
Create Permission Sets
💡 Permission sets define the specific level of access users have within an AWS account.
3
Assign Users/Groups to AWS Accounts and Permission Sets
💡 To grant specific access levels to users/groups within particular AWS accounts.
Adhering to these security best practices ensures a robust and scalable access management strategy with IAM Identity Center.
Use IAM Identity Center for assigning permission sets and roles across AWS accounts to avoid manual management, security risks, and scalability issues.
Avoid mixing IAM Identity Center with manual federated role setups via STS to prevent confusion, redundancy, and policy conflicts. If IAM Identity Center meets needs, use it exclusively.
Create modular, role-specific permission sets (e.g., devops_admin, billing_view_only) rather than combining unrelated policies. This adheres to the principle of least privilege and aids auditing.
Always assign permissions via groups, not to individual users, to prevent privilege creep and simplify management.
If using a central identity provider (Okta, Azure AD), integrate IAM Identity Center with it for smoother SSO and lifecycle management.
Set up redundant access using IAM Users outside the Identity Center for a select group of people as a break-glass mechanism. These IAM users can provide access if the IdP - Identity Center connection fails for any reason or during an Identity Center outage.
Important operational considerations for IAM Identity Center.
IAM is primarily tied to us-east-1 because internal IAM services are hosted there. Global outages to IAM have occurred due to problems in us-east-1.