AWS: Managing Access to IAM Groups

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to configure Grant Kits to automate access requests to an AWS IAM Group by attaching AWS IAM Group Memberships. This use case models Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) using core AWS IAM components.

We will be using the AWS IAM Starter Kit as a base and replace configuration stubs for our use case.

Before you start

1. Make sure you have:

   • An Abbey account

   • An Abbey API Key

   • An AWS User with the IAMFullAccess policy

2. Make sure you setup:

   • An AWS IAM Starter Kit by following Get a Starter Kit

   • A Connection to a repo by following Connect a Repo

Step 1: Create Your User and Group

In the AWS IAM Console, create a new user and group. Do not add the user to the group at this time.

Add a User

Add a Group

Step 2: Configure Your Grant Kit

Configure Output

Grant Kits rely on your GitHub account and repository name to output access changes, which we'll set through Terraform local variables. Update the locals block in main.tf with your account_name and repo_name

main.tf

 locals {
  account_name = "" #CHANGEME
  repo_name = "" #CHANGEME
  ...
}

Configure Reviewers

Workflow defines who should approve an access request.

Let's update the reviewers block by adding yourself as the reviewer by switching [email protected] with the email address you use to sign into Abbey.

main.tf

 resource "abbey_grant_kit" "..." {
   ...
   workflow = {
     steps = [
       {
         reviewers = {
-          one_of = ["[email protected]"] # CHANGEME
+          one_of = ["[email protected]"]

(optional) Configure AWS Region

The default for this Starter Kit uses us-east-1. If your AWS infrastructure is in another region, you can replace it in providers.tf.

providers.tf

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"  # CHANGEME (if necessary)
}

Step 3: Link AWS IAM with Abbey

Now you'll need to link AWS IAM with Abbey.

curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ABBEY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  https://api.abbey.io/v1/users/<user_id>/apps \
  -d '{"type": "aws_iam", "data": {"id": "<your AWS IAM user ID>"}}'

Step 4: Deploy Your Starter Kit

First, add your GitHub-related secrets to your repo's repository secrets:

• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

• ABBEY_TOKEN

You can find the AWS keys in your AWS account.

The ABBEY_TOKEN is your API key.

What should it look like?

To deploy your Starter Kit, follow instructions from Deploy Your Grant Kit.

Step 5: Automate Access Management

🎉 Congratulations! Abbey is now managing permissions to your Resource for you. 🎉

You can now start requesting and approving access by following the Request Access and Approve or Deny Access Requests guides.

Abbey strives to help you automate and secure access management without being intrusive.

To that end, this Pull Request contains native Terraform HCL code using normal open source Terraform Provider libraries. It represents the permissions change. In this case, it's just a simple creation of a new Terraform Resource.

After approving the request, you should be able to see that the User has been added to the Group in the AWS console.

Next Steps

To learn more about what Resources you can configure, try one of our Step-by-Step Tutorials.

For more information on how Abbey works, visit the Key Concepts or Grant Kits page.