IAM Least Privilege Patterns

Overview

The principle of least privilege ensures that IAM entities (users, roles, services) have only the permissions necessary to perform their tasks—nothing more. This reduces the blast radius of security incidents and meets compliance requirements.

flowchart TB
    subgraph "Permission Layers"
        PB[Permission Boundary]
        RP[Role Policy]
        RP2[Resource Policy]
    end
    
    subgraph "Effective Permissions"
        EP[Intersection of All Layers]
    end