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Limiting Privileged User Access by Setting Permissions Boundaries in AWS IAM

In this hands-on lab scenario, you are a security engineer working for a new startup that's launching an online bookstore for rare and antique books. The founder, Kia, needs your help with setting up her system administrators with the proper access permissions. In order to provide access and ensure the proper security measures are in place, you will use AWS Identity & Access Management (IAM) to define a system administrators group and set permissions boundaries.

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Path Info

Level
Clock icon Intermediate
Duration
Clock icon 30m
Last updated
Clock icon Sep 04, 2025

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Table of Contents

  1. Challenge

    Create a Group Controlled via an AWS-Managed Policy and Assign Users to a Group

    1. Navigate to IAM.
    2. From the left dashboard menu, click Users to view existing users.
    3. Click User groups.
    4. Click Create group.
    5. For the User group name, enter "SysAdmins".
    6. In the Add users to the group - Optional section, select the following User name:
      • sysadmin-1
      • sysadmin-2
      • sysadmin-3
    7. In the Attach permissions policies - Optional section, select the AdministratorAccess policy.
    8. Click Create group.
    9. Review the group, and then click Create Group.

  2. Challenge

    Limit Privileged Users by Setting Permissions Boundaries

    1. Click SysAdmins under Group name.
    2. Click sysadmin-2.
    3. Click the arrow next to Permissions boundary (not set) to expand it.
    4. Click Set boundary.
    5. In the Filter policies field, type "ec2".
    6. Select AmazonEC2FullAccess.
    7. Click Set boundary.
    8. From the left dashboard, click Users.
    9. Click sysadmin-3.
    10. In the Filter policies field, type "s3".
    11. Select AmazonS3FullAccess.
    12. Click Set boundary.

  3. Challenge

    Verifying Limits on Privileged Users

    Verifying S3 Limited Access on sysadmin-3

    1. In the top right-hand corner, select the arrow for the dropdown menu next to your user name.
    2. Click Sign Out to log out as clouid_user.
    3. Click Log back in.
    4. The IAM user name is sysadmin-3 with a password of h3F#dJHk323k6D.
    5. Click Sign In.
    6. Navigate to EC2.
    7. Click Instances (running). (NOTE: You should encounter a "not authorized to perform this operation" message.)
    8. Click Launch Instances.
    9. Click Select on Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type. (NOTE: You should encounter a "not authorized to perform this operation" message.)
    10. Navigate back to the AWS Management Console.
    11. Click S3.
    12. Click Create bucket.
    13. Under General configuration, enter "acg-test-123456" for the Bucket name.
    14. Select US East (N. Virgina) us-east-1 for the AWS Region.
    15. Click Create bucket.
    16. In the top right-hand corner, select the arrow for the dropdown menu next to your user name.
    17. Click Sign Out to log out as sysadmin-3.

    Verifying EC2 Limited Access on sysadmin-2

    1. Click Log back in.
    2. The IAM user name is sysadmin-2 with a password of h3F#dJHk323k6D.
    3. Click Sign In.
    4. Navigate to S3. (NOTE: You should encounter an access denied message.)
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