By Purusottam Mupunu, Co-founder and CTO, Cloudanix — March 13, 2024

Integrate Just In Time (JIT) Access with AWS Identity Center

Introduction

In today's dynamic and rapidly evolving cloud landscape, securing access to AWS resources is paramount for organizations of all sizes. Today, Network is not the perimeter anymore, instead, it's the IAM. However, traditional access management approaches often struggle to keep pace with the agility and scalability demanded by modern cloud environments. Enter AWS Just-In-Time (JIT) access, a powerful security feature that offers a dynamic and flexible solution to access management challenges.

IAM JIT access, integrated seamlessly within AWS Identity Center, revolutionizes how organizations provision and manage access to AWS resources. Unlike traditional static access models, IAM JIT access adopts a dynamic and on-demand approach, granting users temporary access privileges precisely when needed, and only for the duration required to accomplish specific tasks.

At its core, IAM JIT access empowers organizations to adopt a Zero Trust Security model by enforcing the principle of least privilege and minimizing the exposure of sensitive resources to potential security threats. By automating access provisioning and deprovisioning based on contextual factors such as user attributes, time of access, and request justification, IAM JIT access enhances security posture while streamlining access management workflows.

In this blog post, we will delve into the world of IAM JIT access within AWS, exploring its key features, benefits, implementation best practices, and its role in elevating security for modern cloud environments. In our earlier blog post, we highlighted how IAM JIT works. In this blog post, we will dive deep into how the combination of IAM JIT and AWS Identity Center can be leverated to elevate your IAM Security Posture along with streamlined Identity Workloads Management.

IAM JIT Architecture with AWS Identity Center

Code Security Dashboard with a detailed summary

What is AWS Identity Center?

AWS Identity Center serves as the central hub for managing user identities, permissions, and access to AWS resources within an organization's cloud environment. As a core component of AWS's comprehensive Identity and Access Management (IAM) services, AWS Identity Center provides organizations with robust tools and capabilities to securely authenticate, authorize, and govern user access to AWS resources.

At its foundation, AWS Identity Center offers a unified and centralized approach to identity management, enabling organizations to create and manage user accounts, assign granular permissions, and enforce security policies across the AWS infrastructure. By consolidating identity and access management functions into a single platform, AWS Identity Center simplifies administrative tasks, enhances visibility and control, and strengthens security posture within the AWS cloud environment.

Benefits of AWS Identity Center

Here are a few benefits of adopting AWS Identity Center:

Centralized Identity Management: AWS provides a centralized and unified platform for managing user identities, access permissions, and authentication mechanisms across AWS services and resources. This centralized approach streamlines identity management tasks, reduces administrative overhead, and ensures consistency and coherence in access control policies.
Integration with AWS Services: AWS Identity Center integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and features, including AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Directory Service, and more. This tight integration enables organizations to leverage AWS Identity Center's capabilities within the existing AWS infrastructure, workflows, and applications, enhancing interoperability and operational efficiency.
Enhanced Security and Compliance: By implementing robust authentication mechanisms, access controls, and security policies, AWS Identity Center helps organizations bolster the security posture and mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches. Furthermore, AWS Identity Center enables organizations to enforce compliance with industry regulations and security best practices, ensuring the protection of sensitive data and assets within the AWS cloud environment.

Implementing IAM JIT for AWS Identity Center:

Outline the steps to configure IAM JIT in AWS Identity Center, including setting up JIT policies, defining access rules, and configuring user attributes for JIT provisioning.

Implementing IAM JIT (Just-In-Time) access with AWS Identity Center can significantly enhance security, streamline access management workflows, and improve operational efficiency within an organization's AWS environment. Here's how IAM JIT can help if implemented with AWS Identity Center:

Dynamic Access Provisioning: IAM JIT allows organizations to provision access to AWS resources dynamically, granting temporary permissions to users precisely when needed and only for the duration required to complete specific tasks. By integrating IAM JIT with AWS Identity Center, organizations can automate the provisioning of access rights based on contextual factors such as user attributes, time of access, and request justification.
Reduced Attack Surface: IAM JIT helps organizations adopt a Zero Trust Security model by enforcing the principle of least privilege. By granting temporary access only when necessary, IAM JIT minimizes the exposure of sensitive resources to potential security threats, reducing the attack surface and mitigating the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches.
Auditing and Reporting: IAM JIT with AWS Identity Center provides comprehensive auditing and reporting capabilities, allowing organizations to monitor and track access requests, permissions, and usage patterns in real-time. By generating detailed access logs and reports, IAM JIT enables organizations to demonstrate compliance with security policies and regulatory requirements, as well as conduct forensic analysis in the event of security incidents.

How Cloudanix JIT Access Works with AWS Identity Center

For the Cloudanix IAM JIT for AWS Identity Center to work, customers need to have integration with Identity Providers. Be it Azure Entra ID or Google Workspaces or Okta or other Identity Providers. AWS Identity Center works with all major Identity Providers.

Once AWS Identity Center is setup, Cloudanix would synchronize all the Principals (Users, Groups), Permission Sets and Account Mapping. Along with that, Cloudanix will enable our customers to configure the IAM JIT setup with many levers, like:

Manage JIT Eligibility for Roles / PermissionSets
Auto Approve if Roles / PermissionSets are limited in permissions
Define Maximum Duration of JIT Access
And More

Once Configured, JIT Requesters can request Time-Limited JIT access for a specific Privilege in your Cloud Account with Approval workflow.

Approvers can see the context and either Approve or Reject requests.

Cloudanix takes care of Provisioning and Deprovisioning Access based on the selected time limits.

Review the timeline of JIT Access

Cloudanix Monitors for all activities performed during the JIT session

Once Provisioned, Users can view the Elevated Access in the AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) Platform.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the integration of IAM JIT support with AWS Identity Center, provided by Cloudanix, represents a significant advancement in the realm of identity and access management within the AWS cloud ecosystem. By combining the dynamic and on-demand access capabilities of IAM JIT with the centralized identity management features of AWS Identity Center, organizations can achieve heightened levels of security, agility, and efficiency in managing access to AWS resources.

Furthermore, the seamless integration of IAM JIT support with AWS Identity Center simplifies access management workflows, streamlining the provisioning and deprovisioning of access rights based on contextual factors such as user attributes, time of access, and request justification. This automation not only enhances security posture but also improves operational efficiency, enabling organizations to adapt quickly to changing access requirements and scale the cloud environments with confidence.

In essence, IAM JIT support on AWS Identity Center, powered by Cloudanix, empowers organizations to embrace a proactive and adaptive approach to access management, enabling them to harness the full potential of the AWS cloud securely and confidently. As organizations strive to stay ahead of evolving security challenges and compliance demands, IAM JIT support on AWS Identity Center emerges as a cornerstone of modern cloud security strategy, driving innovation, efficiency, and resilience in the digital era.