AWS IAM Best Practices

AWS IAM Best Practices

Review and harden IAM policies following AWS security best practices and least privilege principles.

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to review IAM policies, implement least privilege access, or harden IAM security.

Core Principles

Least Privilege

• Grant minimum permissions needed
• Use managed policies when possible
• Avoid wildcard (*) permissions
• Regular access reviews

Defense in Depth

• Enable MFA for all users
• Use IAM roles instead of access keys
• Implement service control policies (SCPs)
• Enable CloudTrail for audit

Separation of Duties

• Separate admin and user roles
• Use different roles for different environments
• Implement approval workflows
• Regular permission audits

IAM Security Checks

Find Overly Permissive Policies

# List policies with full admin access
aws iam list-policies --scope Local \
  --query 'Policies[*].[PolicyName,Arn]' --output table | \
  grep -i admin

# Find policies with wildcard actions
aws iam list-policies --scope Local --query 'Policies[*].Arn' --output text | \
while read arn; do