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CLF-016
Which of the following is the most appropriate description of the principle of least privilege?
Choices
Explanation and answer
Read the explanation and correct answer (spoiler — try answering first)
Correct answer: A. Grant only the permissions necessary to perform the work.
Explanation
Under the principle of least privilege, only the permissions required for the job are granted to users and services.
Per-choice explanations
A. Grant only the permissions necessary to perform the work.
Correct. Permissions are scoped down to the necessary actions and resources.
B. Share access keys among everyone.
Incorrect. Sharing access keys should be avoided.
C. Do not manage permissions at all.
Incorrect. Permission management is a security fundamental.
D. Grant AdministratorAccess to all users.
Incorrect. Routinely using AdministratorAccess is dangerous.
Practical Use
The principle of least privilege is a fundamental security design principle. It states that users, roles, and services should be granted only the permissions on actions and resources that are required for the job, and nothing more. On AWS, IAM policies let you scope permissions along three axes: Action (the operation), Resource (the target), and Condition. For example, you can control permissions at fine granularity such as allowing only GetObject on the objects under a specific Amazon S3 bucket while not allowing writes or deletes, allowing Amazon EC2 launches only in a specific AWS Region, or allowing sensitive operations only on sessions that passed MFA. The standard approach for operating this principle in practice is gradual reduction. First, run the application with broader permissions (AWS managed policies or permissions close to *:*), aggregate the APIs that were actually called using AWS CloudTrail, and then use the policy generation feature of IAM Access Analyzer to narrow the policy to the minimum necessary based on that result. Conversely, if you leave AdministratorAccess granted to all users, the blast radius from insider misuse, accidental operations, or credential leaks expands without limit. Sharing access keys is a prohibited item one step earlier. The desirable practice is to split IAM users per person, and ideally to use temporary credentials through IAM Identity Center. On CLF-C02, this content is asked frequently as a direct definition question, such as which of the following is the most appropriate description of the principle of least privilege. The correct answer is the option that states you grant only the permissions required for the job. Distractors line up in the opposite direction of the principle, such as granting AdministratorAccess to everyone, not managing permissions at all, or sharing access keys. From SAA-C03 onward, IAM policy condition keys, the combination of resource-based policies and identity-based policies, and the upper-bound management with Permissions Boundaries or SCPs are asked in depth.