AWS analytics companies streamline consumer entry to information, permissions setting, and auditing
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I’m happy to announce a brand new use case primarily based on trusted id propagation, a lately launched functionality of AWS IAM Id Middle.
Tableau, a generally used enterprise intelligence (BI) utility, can now propagate end-user id all the way down to Amazon Redshift. This has a triple profit. It simplifies the sign-in expertise for finish customers. It permits information homeowners to outline entry primarily based on actual end-user id. It permits auditors to confirm information entry by customers.
Trusted id propagation permits purposes that eat information (comparable to Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Redshift Question Editor, Amazon EMR Studio, and others) to propagate the consumer’s id and group memberships to the companies that retailer and handle entry to the information, comparable to Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, Amazon Easy Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon EMR, and others. Trusted id propagation is a functionality of IAM Id Middle that improves the sign-in expertise throughout a number of analytics purposes, simplifies information entry administration, and simplifies audit. Finish customers profit from single sign-on and do not need to specify the IAM roles they need to assume to connect with the system.
Earlier than diving into extra particulars, let’s agree on terminology.
I exploit the time period “id suppliers” to confer with the programs that maintain consumer identities and group memberships. These are the programs that immediate the consumer for credentials and carry out the authentication. For instance, Azure Listing, Okta, Ping Id, and extra. Examine the total checklist of id suppliers we assist.
I exploit the time period “user-facing purposes” to designate the purposes that eat information, comparable to Tableau, Microsoft PowerBI, QuickSight, Amazon Redshift Question Editor, and others.
And eventually, once I write “downstream companies”, I confer with the analytics engines and storage companies that course of, retailer, or handle entry to your information: Amazon Redshift, Athena, S3, EMR, and others.
To know the advantage of trusted id propagation, let’s briefly speak about how information entry was granted till as we speak. When a user-facing utility accesses information from a downstream service, both the upstream service makes use of generic credentials (comparable to “tableau_user“) or assumes an IAM position to authenticate in opposition to the downstream service. That is the supply of two challenges.
First, it makes it tough for the downstream service administrator to outline entry insurance policies which might be fine-tuned for the precise consumer making the request. As seen from the downstream service, all requests originate from that frequent consumer or IAM position. If Jeff and Jane are each mapped to the BusinessAnalytics IAM position, then it isn’t doable to present them completely different ranges of entry, for instance, readonly and read-write. Moreover, if Jeff can also be within the Finance group, he wants to decide on a task through which to function; he can’t entry information from each teams in the identical session.
Secondly, the duty of associating a data-access occasion to an finish consumer entails some undifferentiated heavy lifting. If the request originates from an IAM position known as BusinessAnalytics, then further work is required to determine which consumer was behind that motion.
Effectively, this explicit instance would possibly look quite simple, however in actual life, organizations have lots of of customers and hundreds of teams to match to lots of of datasets. There was a chance for us to Invent and Simplify.
As soon as configured, the brand new trusted id propagation offers a technical mechanism for user-facing purposes to entry information on behalf of the particular consumer behind the keyboard. Understanding the precise consumer id gives three foremost benefits.
First, it permits downstream service directors to create and handle entry insurance policies primarily based on precise consumer identities, the teams they belong to, or a mix of the 2. Downstream service directors can now assign entry by way of customers, teams, and datasets. That is the best way most of our prospects naturally take into consideration entry to information—intermediate mappings to IAM roles are now not obligatory to realize these patterns.
Second, auditors now have entry to the unique consumer id in system logs and might confirm that insurance policies are applied appropriately and comply with all necessities of the corporate or industry-level insurance policies.
Third, customers of BI purposes can profit from single sign-on between purposes. Your end-users now not want to grasp your organization’s AWS accounts and IAM roles. As an alternative, they’ll sign up to EMR Studio (for instance) utilizing their company single sign-on that they’re used to for therefore many different issues they do at work.
How does trusted id propagation work?
Trusted id propagation depends on customary mechanisms from our {industry}: OAuth2 and JWT. OAuth2 is an open customary for entry delegation that enables customers to grant third-party user-facing purposes entry to information on different companies (downstream companies) with out exposing their credentials. JWT (JSON Internet Token) is a compact, URL-safe technique of representing identities and claims to be transferred between two events. JWTs are signed, which implies their integrity and authenticity might be verified.
How you can configure trusted id propagation
Configuring trusted id propagation requires setup in IAM Id Middle, on the user-facing utility, and on the downstream service as a result of every of those must be informed to work with end-user identities. Though the particulars might be completely different for every utility, they’ll all comply with this sample:
- Configure an id supply in AWS IAM Id Middle. AWS recommends enabling automated provisioning in case your id supplier helps it, as most do. Automated provisioning works by way of the SCIM synchronization customary to synchronize your listing customers and teams into IAM Id Middle. You in all probability have configured this already in the event you presently use IAM Id Middle to federate your workforce into the AWS Administration Console. It is a one-time configuration, and also you don’t must repeat this step for every user-facing utility.
- Configure your user-facing utility to authenticate its customers together with your id supplier. For instance, configure Tableau to make use of Okta.
- Configure the connection between the user-facing utility and the downstream service. For instance, configure Tableau to entry Amazon Redshift. In some circumstances, it requires utilizing the ODBC or JDBC driver for Redshift.
Then comes the configuration particular to trusted id propagation. For instance, think about your group has developed a user-facing net utility that authenticates the customers together with your id supplier, and that you just need to entry information in AWS on behalf of the present authenticated consumer. For this use case, you’d create a trusted token issuer in IAM Id Middle. This highly effective new assemble provides you a technique to map your utility’s authenticated customers to the customers in your IAM Id Middle listing in order that it may make use of trusted id propagation. My colleague Becky wrote a weblog publish to indicate you how one can develop such an utility. This extra configuration is required solely when utilizing third-party purposes, comparable to Tableau, or a customer-developed utility, that authenticate outdoors of AWS. When utilizing user-facing purposes managed by AWS, comparable to Amazon QuickSight, no additional setup is required.
Lastly, downstream service directors should configure the entry insurance policies primarily based on the consumer id and group memberships. The precise configuration varies from one downstream service to the opposite. If the applying reads or writes information in Amazon S3, the information proprietor could use S3 Entry Grants within the Amazon S3 console to grant entry for customers and teams to prefixes in Amazon S3. If the applying makes queries to an Amazon Redshift information warehouse, the information proprietor should configure IAM Id Middle trusted connection within the Amazon Redshift console and match the viewers declare (aud) from the id supplier.
Now that you’ve a high-level overview of the configuration, let’s dive into crucial half: the consumer expertise.
The tip-user expertise
Though the exact expertise of the tip consumer will clearly be completely different for various purposes, in all circumstances, will probably be less complicated and extra acquainted to workforce customers than earlier than. The consumer interplay will start with a redirect-based authentication single sign-on move that takes the consumer to their id supplier, the place they’ll sign up with credentials, multi-factor authentication, and so forth.
Let’s have a look at the main points of how an finish consumer would possibly work together with Okta and Tableau when trusted id propagation has been configured.
Right here is an illustration of the move and the primary interactions between programs and companies.
Right here’s the way it goes.
1. As a consumer, I try and sign up to Tableau.
2. Tableau initiates a browser-based move and redirects to the Okta sign-in web page the place I can enter my sign-in credentials. On profitable authentication, Okta points an authentication token (ID and entry token) to Tableau.
3. Tableau initiates a JDBC reference to Amazon Redshift and contains the entry token within the connection request. The Amazon Redshift JDBC driver makes a name to Amazon Redshift. As a result of your Amazon Redshift administrator enabled IAM Id Middle, Amazon Redshift forwards the entry token to IAM Id Middle.
4. IAM Id Middle verifies and validates the entry token and alternate the entry token for an Id Middle issued token.
5. Amazon Redshift will resolve the Id Middle token to find out the corresponding Id Middle consumer and authorize entry to the useful resource. Upon profitable authorization, I can join from Tableau to Amazon Redshift.
As soon as authenticated, I can begin to use Tableau as normal.
And once I connect with Amazon Redshift Question Editor, I can observe the sys_query_history desk to verify who was the consumer who made the question. It appropriately studies awsidc:<electronic mail handle>, the Okta electronic mail handle I used once I linked from Tableau.
You possibly can learn Tableau’s documentation for extra particulars about this configuration.
Pricing and availability
Trusted id propagation is offered at no further value in the 26 AWS Areas the place AWS IAM Id Middle is out there as we speak.
Listed below are extra particulars about trusted id propagation and downstream service configurations.
Completely happy studying!
With trusted id propagation, now you can configure analytics programs to propagate the precise consumer id, group membership, and attributes to AWS companies comparable to Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, or Amazon S3. It simplifies the administration of entry insurance policies on these companies. It additionally permits auditors to confirm your group’s compliance posture to know the true id of customers accessing information.
Get began now and configure your Tableau integration with Amazon Redshift.
PS: Writing a weblog publish at AWS is at all times a crew effort, even if you see just one identify underneath the publish title. On this case, I need to thank Eva Mineva, Laura Reith, and Roberto Migli for his or her much-appreciated assist in understanding the various subtleties and technical particulars of trusted id propagation.
