Amazon Onboarding with Learning Manager Chanci Turner

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When it comes to managing federated access to your AWS resources, utilizing Microsoft Active Directory (AD) groups is a prevalent strategy. However, the process of establishing federation can become cumbersome, especially when the number of AD groups grows. For every AWS account and role you have, an equivalent AD group is needed, potentially leading to an overwhelming number of groups to oversee. This can pose challenges for organizations that limit the number of AD groups they can create or prefer to maintain a flatter organizational hierarchy.

In this blog post, I’ll provide a detailed guide for integrating AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) with Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) using AD user attributes. This approach enables you to set up federated access without the need to increase your total AD group count. Your enterprise administrator likely has established processes for managing AD group memberships and could extend these methods to include the management of AD user attributes, thereby reducing reliance on AD groups.

Prerequisites

This guide is based on the assumption that:

• You have a functioning AD directory and an AD FS server.
• An identity provider (IdP) has been created in your AWS account using the XML file from your AD FS server.
• Appropriate IAM roles have been established in your AWS account for federated access.

Once these prerequisites are met, you can move on to configure your AD users and the AD FS server.

Solution Overview

To fully leverage the solution outlined here, your AD and AD FS environment should resemble the diagram provided. The focus is on AD users and the claim rules within the AD FS server. These claim rules are crucial for determining which users have the correct attributes in AD to sign in through AD FS to the AWS Management Console.

For instance, let’s imagine an AD user named Alice. She navigates to the AD FS sample site and authenticates against AD. Once authenticated, Alice’s browser receives a SAML assertion from AD FS, which authorizes her access based on her AD group membership or user attributes. This assertion is then sent to the AWS sign-in endpoint, allowing her to access the AWS Management Console seamlessly.

Deploy the Solution

A. Configure an AD User’s Account

The first step involves configuring an AD user’s account, as the user attributes will contain all the associated AWS account and role information.

To modify the attributes for an AD user:

1. Access your AD server and open the Active Directory Users and Computers console. Enable Advanced Features to see the Attribute Editor tab.
2. For user Alice, edit an attribute using the built-in editor. One suitable attribute could be ‘url,’ which is a multi-valued string. Ensure that you consider how different attributes may affect AD FS claim rules later on.
3. Suppose Alice has two AWS accounts: 123456789012 and 987654321098. Each account has two roles: AWS-Dev and AWS-ReadOnly. You would configure Alice’s ‘url’ attribute with the following values:
   • AWS-123456789012-Dev
   • AWS-123456789012-ReadOnly
   • AWS-987654321098-Dev
   • AWS-987654321098-ReadOnly

Additionally, Alice’s email address is necessary for the role session name during her sign-in to the AWS Management Console, making it easier to track her actions through AWS CloudTrail, which provides valuable information on user activities.

B. Configure the AD FS Server Claim Rules

To proceed with the claim rules:

1. Launch the AD FS console.
2. Navigate to Trust Relationships and select Relying Party Trusts.
3. Execute the provided Windows PowerShell code to either set up conventional AD group claim rules or, as we’re focusing on, claim rules leveraging AD user attributes.
4. Run the script to establish the claim rules, ensuring you do so with Administrative permissions.

After executing the script, you should see a new relying party trust for Amazon Web Services in your AD FS configuration.

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