Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Simplify and improve access control for your AWS analytics services (SEC245)

Summary

Debu Panda, Ron Colley, and Camille Taylor presented on simplifying and improving access control across AWS analytics services.
They introduced a new feature called "trusted identity propagation" to centralize management of access and permissions based on user identity.
The feature integrates with IAM Identity Center and supports various identity providers like Azure ID, Okta, OneLogin, etc.
It allows for seamless single sign-on experiences and enforces permissions based on user group or identity across services like Amazon Redshift, QuickSight, EMR, and Lake Formation.
The feature ensures that user identity flows across systems for end-to-end auditing, addressing challenges with current IAM role-based access and auditing.
Demonstrations were provided to show how the feature works in practice with QuickSight, Redshift, and IAM Identity Center.
Ron Colley gave an overview of IAM Identity Center, its evolution, and its role in identity propagation.
The session covered the technical workings of trusted identity propagation, including OAuth 2.0 and SIGV4 integration.
Upcoming integrations with services like Athena and additional use cases for EMR and S3 Access Grants were discussed.

The new feature, trusted identity propagation, addresses a significant pain point for AWS customers related to managing access control and auditing across multiple analytics services.
By leveraging IAM Identity Center, AWS is moving towards a more unified and simplified access management system that can work with a variety of identity providers.
The feature's ability to maintain user identity across services and logs is a substantial improvement for auditing and compliance, which is critical for many organizations.
The integration of OAuth 2.0 with AWS's native SIGV4 authentication method is a key innovation that enables this new feature.
The demonstrations highlighted the practical benefits of the feature, showing how it simplifies the user experience and access management for data analysts and administrators.
The session indicates AWS's commitment to enhancing security and access management features, which is likely to be a continuing trend in future AWS offerings.
The upcoming integrations and use cases suggest that AWS is actively expanding the scope of trusted identity propagation to encompass more services and scenarios, which will further streamline access control and auditing processes for AWS customers.