How Amazon VPC Lattice works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to VPC Lattice, learn what IAM features are available to use with VPC Lattice.

For a high-level view of how VPC Lattice and other AWS services work with most IAM features, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies for VPC Lattice

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.

Resource-based policies within VPC Lattice

Supports resource-based policies: Yes

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource in AWS. In AWS services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource of that AWS service. For the resource where the policy is attached, the policy defines what actions a specified principal can perform on that resource and under what conditions. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy.

VPC Lattice supports auth policies, a resource-based policy that lets you control access to services in your service network. For more information, see Control access to VPC Lattice services using auth policies.

VPC Lattice also supports resource-based permissions policies for integration with AWS Resource Access Manager. You can use these resource-based policies to grant permission to manage connectivity to other AWS accounts or organizations for services, resource configurations, and service networks. For more information, see Share your VPC Lattice entities.

Policy actions for VPC Lattice

Supports policy actions: Yes

In an IAM policy statement, you can specify any API action from any service that supports IAM. For VPC Lattice, use the following prefix with the name of the API action: vpc-lattice:. For example: vpc-lattice:CreateService, vpc-lattice:CreateTargetGroup, and vpc-lattice:PutAuthPolicy.

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas, as follows:

"Action": [ "vpc-lattice:action1", "vpc-lattice:action2" ]

You can also specify multiple actions using wildcards. For example, you can specify all actions whose names begin with the word Get, as follows:

"Action": "vpc-lattice:Get*"

For a complete list of VPC Lattice API actions, see Actions defined by Amazon VPC Lattice in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy resources for VPC Lattice

Supports policy resources: Yes

In an IAM policy statement, the Resource element specifies the object or objects that the statement covers. For VPC Lattice, each IAM policy statement applies to the resources that you specify using their ARNs.

The specific Amazon Resource Name (ARN) format depends on the resource. When you provide an ARN, replace the italicized text with your resource-specific information.

Policy condition keys for VPC Lattice

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 the VPC Lattice condition keys, see Condition keys for Amazon VPC Lattice in the Service Authorization Reference.

AWS supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. For information about AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

Access control lists (ACLs) in VPC Lattice

Supports ACLs: No

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) with VPC Lattice

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 VPC Lattice

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.

Service roles for VPC Lattice

Supports service roles: No

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Create a role to delegate permissions to an AWS service in the IAM User Guide.

Service-linked roles for VPC Lattice

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 information about creating or managing VPC Lattice service-linked roles, see Using service-linked roles for Amazon VPC Lattice.