How AWS Outposts works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS Outposts, learn what IAM features are available to use with AWS Outposts.

Identity-based policies for AWS Outposts

Supports identity-based policies: Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policy examples for AWS Outposts

To view examples of AWS Outposts identity-based policies, see AWS Outposts policy examples.

Policy actions for AWS Outposts

Supports policy actions: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of AWS Outposts actions, see Actions defined by AWS Outposts in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in AWS Outposts use the following prefix before the action:

outposts

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [
    "outposts:action1",
    "outposts:action2"
]

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word List, include the following action:

"Action": "outposts:List*"

Policy resources for AWS Outposts

Supports policy resources: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

Some AWS Outposts API actions support multiple resources. To specify multiple resources in a single statement, separate the ARNs with commas.

"Resource": [
    "resource1",
    "resource2"
]

To see a list of AWS Outposts resource types and their ARNs, see Resource types defined by AWS Outposts in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by AWS Outposts.

Policy condition keys for AWS Outposts

Supports service-specific policy condition keys: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element specifies when statements execute based on defined criteria. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of AWS Outposts condition keys, see Condition keys for AWS Outposts in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions defined by AWS Outposts.

To view examples of AWS Outposts identity-based policies, see AWS Outposts policy examples.

ABAC with AWS Outposts

Supports ABAC (tags in policies): Yes

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities and AWS resources, then design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see Define permissions with ABAC authorization in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

Using temporary credentials with AWS Outposts

Supports temporary credentials: Yes

Temporary credentials provide short-term access to AWS resources and are automatically created when you use federation or switch roles. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM and AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Cross-service principal permissions for AWS Outposts

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

Forward access sessions (FAS) use the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service-linked roles for AWS Outposts

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an AWS service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your AWS account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For details about creating or managing AWS Outposts service-linked roles, see Service-linked roles for AWS Outposts.