AdvancedTechnical
5 min
Designing IAM Policies with Least Privilege in AWS
AWSSecurityIAM
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Interview Question
Explain your approach for designing secure IAM policies following least-privilege principles. How would you audit and enforce them in production?
Key Points to Cover
- Define fine-grained policies scoped to actions/resources
- Apply IAM roles over static access keys
- Enable IAM Access Analyzer and CloudTrail monitoring
- Automate policy reviews and attach managed policies where needed
- Apply SCPs for org-level constraints in multi-account setups
Evaluation Rubric
Applies least-privilege principles correctly30% weight
Uses appropriate AWS tools like IAM Analyzer30% weight
Automates security enforcement effectively20% weight
Ensures continuous audit readiness20% weight
Hints
- 💡Least privilege = minimum actions + resources + conditions.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- ⚠️Granting overly broad permissions using wildcards ('*') in actions or resources without proper justification.
- ⚠️Failing to regularly review and rotate IAM credentials, especially static access keys.
- ⚠️Over-reliance on managed policies without customization, leading to unnecessary privileges.
- ⚠️Not enabling or properly configuring CloudTrail or Access Analyzer for comprehensive auditing.
- ⚠️Not implementing automated checks or alerts for IAM policy violations in production.
Potential Follow-up Questions
- ❓How do you detect over-permissive policies?
- ❓When would you use SCPs?
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