How to create and manage users within AWS IAM Identity Center

April 25, 2023: We’ve updated this blog post to include more security learning resources.

September 12, 2022: This blog post has been updated to reflect the new name of AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) – AWS IAM Identity Center. Read more about the name change here.

AWS IAM Identity Center is a cloud service that allows you to grant your users access to AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, across multiple AWS accounts. By default, AWS IAM Identity Center now provides a directory that you can use to create users, organize them in groups, and set permissions across those groups. You can also grant the users that you create in AWS IAM Identity Center permissions to applications such Salesforce, Box, and Office 365. AWS IAM Identity Center and its directory are available at no additional cost to you.

A directory is a key building block that allows you to manage the users to whom you want to grant access to AWS resources and applications. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) provides a way to create users that can be used to access AWS resources within one AWS account. However, many businesses prefer an approach that enables users to sign in once with a single credential and access multiple AWS accounts and applications. You can now create your users centrally in AWS IAM Identity Center and manage user access to all your AWS accounts and applications. Your users sign in to a user portal with a single set of credentials configured in AWS IAM Identity Center, allowing them to access all of their assigned accounts and applications in a single place.

Note: If you manage your users in a Microsoft Active Directory (Microsoft AD) directory, AWS IAM Identity Center already provides you with an option to connect to a Microsoft AD directory. By connecting your Microsoft AD directory once with AWS IAM Identity Center, you can assign permissions for AWS accounts and applications directly to your users by easily looking up users and groups from your Microsoft AD directory. Your users can then use their existing Microsoft AD credentials to sign into the AWS IAM Identity Center user portal and access their assigned accounts and applications in a single place. Customers who manage their users in an existing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory or through a cloud identity provider such as Microsoft Azure AD can continue to use IAM federation to enable their users’ access to AWS resources.

How to create users and groups in AWS IAM Identity Center

You can create users in AWS IAM Identity Center by configuring their email address and name. When you create a user, AWS IAM Identity Center sends an email to the user by default so that they can set their own password. Your user will use their email address and a password they configure in AWS IAM Identity Center to sign into the user portal and access all of their assigned accounts and applications in a single place.

You can also add the users that you create in AWS IAM Identity Center to groups you create in AWS IAM Identity Center. In addition, you can create permissions sets that define permitted actions on an AWS resource, and assign them to your users and groups. For example, you can grant the DevOps group permissions to your production AWS accounts. When you add users to the DevOps group, they get access to your production AWS accounts automatically.

In this post, I will show you how to create users and groups in AWS IAM Identity Center, how to create permission sets, how to assign your groups and users to permission sets and AWS accounts, and how your users can sign into the AWS IAM Identity Center user portal to access AWS accounts. To learn more about how to grant users that you create in AWS IAM Identity Center permissions to business applications such as Office 365 and Salesforce, see Manage IAM Identity Center to Your Applications.

Walk-through prerequisites

For this walk-through, I assume the following:

• You’ve enabled AWS IAM Identity Center for your AWS Organization. To learn more, see Enable AWS IAM Identity Center.
• You’ve added the AWS accounts to which you want to grant AWS IAM Identity Center access to your organization. To learn more, see Managing the AWS Accounts in Your Organization.
• You’ve signed into the AWS Management Console with your AWS Organizations master account credentials. To learn more about AWS Organizations and master accounts, see AWS Organizations FAQs.
• You’ve required permissions to use the AWS IAM Identity Center Console. To learn more, see Permissions Required to Use the AWS IAM Identity Center Console.

Overview

To illustrate how to add users in AWS IAM Identity Center and how to grant permissions to multiple AWS accounts, imagine that you’re the IT manager for a company, Example.com, that wants to make it easy for its users to access resources in multiple AWS accounts. Example.com has five AWS accounts: a master account (called MasterAcct), two developer accounts (DevAccount1 and DevAccount2), and two production accounts (ProdAccount1 and ProdAccount2). Example.com uses AWS Organizations to manage these accounts and has already enabled AWS IAM Identity Center.

Example.com has two developers, Martha and Richard, who need full access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 in the developer accounts (DevAccount1 and DevAccount2) and read-only access to EC2 and S3 resources in the production accounts (ProdAccount1 and ProdAccount2).

The following diagram illustrates how you can grant Martha and Richard permissions to the developer and production accounts in four steps:

1. Add users and groups in AWS IAM Identity Center: Add users Martha and Richard in AWS IAM Identity Center by configuring their names and email addresses. Add a group called Developers in AWS IAM Identity Center and add Martha and Richard to the Developers group.
2. Create permission sets: Create two permission sets. In the first permission set, include policies that give full access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. In second permission set, include policies that give read-only access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.
3. Assign groups to accounts and permission sets: Assign the Developers group to your developer accounts and assign the permission set that gives full access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. Assign the Developers group to your production accounts, too, and assign the permission set that gives read-only access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. Martha and Richard now have full access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 in the developer accounts and read-only access in the production accounts.
4. Users sign into the User Portal to access accounts: Martha and Richard receive email from AWS to set their passwords with AWS IAM Identity Center. Martha and Richard can now sign into the AWS IAM Identity Center User Portal using their email addresses and the passwords they set with AWS IAM Identity Center, allowing them to access their assigned AWS accounts.

Figure 1: Architecture diagram

Step 1: Add users and groups in AWS IAM Identity Center

To add users in AWS IAM Identity Center, navigate to the AWS IAM Identity Center Console. Then, follow the steps below to add Martha as a user, to create a group called Developers, and to add Martha to the Developers group in AWS IAM Identity Center.

1. In the AWS IAM Identity Center Dashboard, choose Manage your directory to navigate to the Directory tab.
   
   
   

   Figure 2: Navigating to the “Manage your directory” page

2. By default, AWS IAM Identity Center provides you a directory that you can use to manage users and groups in AWS IAM Identity Center. To add a user in AWS IAM Identity Center, choose Add user. If you previously connected a Microsoft AD directory with AWS IAM Identity Center, you can switch to using the directory that AWS IAM Identity Center now provides by default by following the steps in Change Directory.
   
   
   

   Figure 3: Adding new users to your directory

3. On the Add User page, enter an email address, first name, and last name for the user, then create a display name. In this example, you’re adding “Martha Rivera” as a user. For the password, choose Send an email to the user with password instructions. This allows users to set their own passwords.

   Optionally, you can also set a mobile phone number and add additional user attributes.
   

   

   Figure 4: Adding user details

4. Next, you’re ready to add the user to groups. First, you need to create a group. Later, in Step 3, you can grant your group permissions to an AWS account so that any users added to the group will inherit the group’s permissions automatically. In this example, you will create a group called Developers and add Martha to the group. To do so, from the Add user to groups page, choose Create group.
   
   
   

   Figure 5: Creating a new group

5. In the Create group window, title your group by filling out the Group name field. For this example, enter Developers. Optionally, you can also enter a description of the group in the Description field. Choose Create to create the group.
   
   
   

   Figure 6: Adding a name and description to your new group

6. On the Add users to group page, check the box next to the group you just created, and then choose Add user. Following this process will allow you to add Martha to the Developers group.
   
   
   

   Figure 7: Adding a user to your new group

You’ve successfully created the user Martha and added her to the Developers group. You can repeat sub-steps 2, 3, and 6 above to create more users and add them to the group. This is the process you should follow to create the user Richard and add him to the Developers group.

Next, you’ll grant the Developers group permissions to AWS resources within multiple AWS accounts. To follow along, you’ll first need to create permission sets.

Step 2: Create permission sets

To grant user permissions to AWS resources, you must create permission sets. A permission set is a collection of administrator-defined policies that AWS IAM Identity Center uses to determine a user’s permissions for any given AWS account. Permission sets can contain either AWS managed policies or custom policies that are stored in AWS IAM Identity Center. Policies contain statements that represent individual access controls (allow or deny) for various tasks. This determines what tasks users can or cannot perform within the AWS account. To learn more about permission sets, see Permission Sets.

For this use case, you’ll create two permissions sets: 1) EC2AndS3FullAccess, which has AmazonEC2FullAccess and AmazonS3FullAccess managed policies attached and 2) EC2AndS3ReadAccess, which has AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess and AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess managed policies attached. Later, in Step 3, you can assign groups to these permissions sets and AWS accounts, so that your users have access to these resources. To learn more about creating permission sets with different levels of access, see Create Permission Set.

Follow the steps below to create permission sets:

1. Navigate to the AWS IAM Identity Center Console and choose AWS accounts in the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Switch to the Permission sets tab on the AWS Accounts page, and then choose Create permissions set.
   
   
   

   Figure 8: Creating a permission set

3. On the Create new permissions set page, choose Create a custom permission set. To learn more about choosing between an existing job function policy and a custom permission set, see Create Permission Set.
   
   
   

   Figure 9: Customizing a permission set

4. Enter EC2AndS3FullAccess in the Name field and choose Attach AWS managed policies. Then choose AmazonEC2FullAccess and AmazonS3FullAccess. Choose Create to create the permission set.
   
   
   

   Figure 10: Attaching AWS managed policies to your permission set

You’ve successfully created a permission set. You can use the steps above to create another permission set, called EC2AndS3ReadAccess, by attaching the AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess and AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess managed policies. Now you’re ready to assign your groups to accounts and permission sets.

Step 3: Assign groups to accounts and permission sets

In this step, you’ll assign your Developers group full access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 in the developer accounts and read-only access to these resources in the production accounts. To do so, you’ll assign the Developers group to the EC2AndS3FullAccess permission set and to the two developer accounts (DevAccount1 and DevAccount2). Similarly, you’ll assign the Developers group to the EC2AndS3ReadAccess permission set and to the production AWS accounts (ProdAccount1 and ProdAccount2).

Follow the steps below to assign the Developers group to the EC2AndS3FullAccess permission set and developer accounts (DevAccount1 and DevAccount2). To learn more about how to manage access to your AWS accounts, see Manage IAM Identity Center to Your AWS Accounts.

1. Navigate to the AWS IAM Identity Center Console and choose AWS Accounts in the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Switch to the AWS organization tab and choose the accounts to which you want to assign your group. For this example, select accounts DevAccount1 and DevAccount2 from the list of AWS accounts. Next, choose Assign users.
   
   
   

   Figure 11: Assigning users to your accounts

3. On the Select users and groups page, type the name of the group you want to add into the search box and choose Search. For this example, you will be looking for the group called Developers. Check the box next to the correct group and choose Next: Permission Sets.
   
   
   

   Figure 12: Setting permissions for the “Developers” group

4. On the Select permissions sets page, select the permission sets that you want to assign to your group. For this use case, you’ll select the EC2AndS3FullAccess permission set. Then choose Finish.
   
   
   

   Figure 13: Choosing permission sets

You’ve successfully granted users in the Developers group access to accounts DevAccount1 and DevAccount2, with full access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.

You can follow the same steps above to grant users in the Developers group access to accounts ProdAccount1 and ProdAccount2 with the permissions in the EC2AndS3ReadAccess permission set. This will grant the users in the Developers group read-only access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 in the production accounts.

Figure 14: Notification of successful account configuration

Step 4: Users sign into User Portal to access accounts

Your users can now sign into the AWS IAM Identity Center User Portal to manage resources in their assigned AWS accounts. The user portal provides your users with IAM Identity Center access to all their assigned accounts and business applications. From the user portal, your users can sign into multiple AWS accounts by choosing the AWS account icon in the portal and selecting the account that they want to access.

You can follow the steps below to see how Martha signs into the user portal to access her assigned AWS accounts.

1. When you added Martha as a user in Step 1, you selected the option Send the user an email with password setup instructions. AWS IAM Identity Center sent instructions to set a password to Martha at the email that you configured when creating the user. This is the email that Martha received:
   
   
   

   Figure 15: AWS IAM Identity Center password configuration email

2. To set her password, Martha will select Accept invitation in the email that she received from AWS IAM Identity Center. Selecting Accept invitation will take Martha to a page where she can set her password. After Martha sets her password, she can navigate to the User Portal.
   
   
   

   Figure 16: User Portal sign-in

3. In the User Portal, Martha can select the AWS Account icon to view all the AWS accounts to which she has permissions.
   
   
   

   Figure 17: View of AWS Account icon from User Portal

4. Martha can now see the developer and production accounts that you granted her permissions to in previous steps. For each account, she can also see the list of roles that she can assume within the account. For example, for DevAccount1 and DevAccount2, Martha can assume the EC2AndS3FullAccess role that gives her full access to manage Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. Similarly, for ProdAccount1 and ProdAccount2, Martha can assume the EC2AndS3ReadAccess role that gives her read-only access to Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. Martha can select accounts and choose Management Console next to the role she wants to assume, letting her sign into the AWS Management Console to manage AWS resources. To switch to a different account, Martha can navigate to the User Portal and select a different account. From the User Portal, Martha can also get temporary security credentials for short-term access to resources in an AWS account using AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). To learn more, see How to Get Credentials of an IAM Role for Use with CLI Access to an AWS Account.
   
   
   

   Figure 18: Switching accounts from the User Portal

5. Martha bookmarks the user portal URL in her browser so that she can quickly access the user portal the next time she wants to access AWS accounts.

Summary

By default, AWS now provides you with a directory that you can use to manage users and groups within AWS IAM Identity Center and to grant user permissions to resources in multiple AWS accounts and business applications. In this blog post, I showed you how to manage users and groups within AWS IAM Identity Center and grant them permissions to multiple AWS accounts. I also showed how your users sign into the user portal to access their assigned AWS accounts.

If you have feedback or questions about AWS IAM Identity Center, start a new thread on the AWS IAM Identity Center forum or contact AWS Support. If you have feedback about this blog post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

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