Category: Amazon Verified Permissions

Externalized authorization for custom applications is a security approach where access control decisions are managed outside of the application logic. Instead of embedding authorization rules within the application’s code, these rules are defined as policies, which are evaluated by a separate system to make an authorization decision. This separation enhances an application’s security posture by […]

August 9, 2024: This post has been updated to reflect a new feature in Amazon Verified Permissions that supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) compliant identity providers as identity source Externalizing authorization logic for application APIs can yield multiple benefits for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. These benefits can include freeing up development teams to focus on […]

Implementing user authentication and authorization for custom applications requires significant effort. For authentication, customers often use an external identity provider (IdP) such as Amazon Cognito. Yet, authorization logic is typically implemented in code. This code can be prone to errors, especially as permissions models become complex, and presents significant challenges when auditing permissions and deciding […]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) was recognized by KuppingerCole Analysts AG as an Overall Leader in the firm’s Leadership Compass report for Policy Based Access Management. The Leadership Compass report reveals Amazon Verified Permissions as an Overall Leader (as shown in Figure 1), a Product Leader for functional strength, and an Innovation Leader for open source […]

Access control is essential for multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) applications. SaaS developers must manage permissions, fine-grained authorization, and isolation. In this post, we demonstrate how you can use Amazon Verified Permissions for access control in a multi-tenant document management SaaS application using a per-tenant policy store approach. We also describe how to enforce the […]

Enterprises often have an identity provider (IdP) for their employees and another for their customers. Using multiple IdPs allows you to apply different access controls and policies for employees and for customers. However, managing multiple identity systems can be complex. A unified authorization layer can ease administration by centralizing access policies for APIs regardless of […]

Cedar is an open-source language that you can use to write policies and make authorization decisions based on those policies. AWS security services including AWS Verified Access and Amazon Verified Permissions use Cedar to define policies. Cedar supports schema declaration for the structure of entity types in those policies and policy validation with that schema. […]

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies are at the core of access control on AWS. They enable the bundling of permissions, helping to provide effective and modular access control for AWS services. Service control policies (SCPs) complement IAM policies by helping organizations enforce permission guardrails at scale across their AWS accounts. The use of access control […]

Amazon Verified Permissions is designed to simplify the process of managing permissions within an application. In this blog post, we aim to help customers understand how this service can be applied to several business use cases. Companies typically use custom entitlement logic embedded in their business applications. This is the most common approach, and it […]

This post is a deep dive into the design of Cedar, an open source language for writing and evaluating authorization policies. Using Cedar, you can control access to your application’s resources in a modular and reusable way. You write Cedar policies that express your application’s permissions, and the application uses Cedar’s authorization engine to decide which […]