Giving an account access to your AWS resources

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Dec 14, 2018
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
3 minutes

tl;dr

Create an IAM Role for Another AWS account. Attach permission policies to tailor the level of access you want that account to have.
Create an IAM Policy that allows switching roles and assign it to the IAM Role you create
- The user must be logged in with an IAM account in order to switch role. (Root AWS accounts don’t even show the option to switch roles)
- If an External ID is required as part of the role, you can not switch roles using the management console
Copy the link that the user can use to switch to the role and share it with the other account https://signin.aws.amazon.com/switchrole?account=account_id_number&roleName=role_name&displayName=text_to_display

Stuff you need:

12-digit Account ID of the your own AWS account
12-digit Account ID of the user you want to give access to
Role ARN (to be used in the IAM policy, will be created)
Switch Role link (to share with the other account, will be created)

IAM Policy (Grant a user permission to switch to the IAM Role)

NOTES:

You can only switch roles when you sign in as an IAM User, not when you sign in as the AWS Account root user
You cannot switch roles in the AWS Management Console to a role that requires an ExternalId value.

For the user to be able to switch roles and manage your account they must be specifically allowed to do so. This is done by creating a policy that allows swithing roles and assigning it to the role.

IAM Console > Policies > Create policy > JSON

Add the following code and click Review policy

1{
2    "Version": "2012-10-17",
3    "Statement": {
4        "Effect": "Allow",
5        "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
6        "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::848078208591:role/Aamnah-FullAccess"
7    }
8}

Give it a name, let’s call it ‘SwitchRole’, and click Create policy

Add this policy to the IAM Role you create. Now copy the link for switching roles and share them with the user. The user who wants to login has to create an IAM account and login with that instead of logging in with their root AWS acconut

IAM Role

You can add an IAM Role to allow access to another Account ID. This Account ID is the 12-digit account ID of an AWS account, which isn’t necessarily part of your organization.

Create an IAM role for granting another AWS account the access you want to your account’s resources.

IAM console > Roles > Create Role > Another AWS Account

Enter the Account ID of the account you want to give access to.
Leave the Require external ID bit unchecked. It’s not possible to switch roles in the AWS Management Console when it requires an external ID.
Attach the permission policies you want the role to have. Make sure you attach the SwitchRole policy we just created
Last step is to enter a Role name and click Create role

Notes