AWS IAM enables identity federation to external services using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs)
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) announces outbound identity federation, enabling customers to securely federate their AWS identities to external services using short-lived JSON Web Tokens (JWTs). This allows customers to securely authenticate their AWS workloads with third-party cloud providers, SaaS providers, and self-hosted applications without using long-term credentials or implementing complex workarounds.
Customers can now exchange their AWS IAM credentials for cryptographically signed, short-lived JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), providing a simple and secure mechanism for AWS workloads to access external services. These tokens contain rich context about the AWS workloads, enabling external services to implement fine-grained access control. Administrators can control access to token generation and enforce token properties (such as lifetime, audience and signing algorithms) using IAM policies and audit token usage using CloudTrail logs, allowing them to meet their organization’s security and compliance requirements.
This capability is available in all AWS commercial Regions, AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, and China Regions. To get started, visit the list of resources below:
- Read the AWS News Blog Post
- Visit IAM Documentation