Practicing the Principle of Least Privilege in Cloud Computing

In today's cloud computing landscape, ensuring the security and integrity of shared resources is crucial. The principle of least privilege, which dictates that each entity should have access only to the information and resources necessary for its legitimate purpose, is a fundamental concept in achieving this goal.

This principle can be applied through various means, including the use of Amazon Cognito Identity Pools and tagged sessions. By allocating an IAM role to authenticated users and tagging their user session with claims, organizations can achieve fine-grained control over resource access.

In practice, this means that services that assume a shared role can only access resources that belong to or correspond to the current user. For example, in Amazon S3, objects can be grouped under a username prefix to provide access control, while in DynamoDB, partition keys and sort keys can be used to restrict access to specific items.

By applying the principle of least privilege, organizations can improve security, reduce risk, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. This approach is particularly important when sharing resources among multiple tenants or users.

Source: https://dev.to/blogposting/practicing-the-principle-of-least-privilege-3n2c