Use case
Enhancing Security with IAM Role Migration
- Vishalkumar Chaurasia
About the Customer
Freshfruit.ai is a pioneering Agri-tech company that specializes in using artificial intelligence and machine learning to assess the quality of fresh produce. Their innovative platform, available on Android and iOS, offers advanced quality assurance processes for fruits and vegetables, providing deep insights into product quality. With a mission to revolutionize the global fresh produce supply chain, Freshfruit.ai serves customers worldwide, helping them maintain product consistency and ensure consumer satisfaction.
Customer Challenge
Freshfruit.ai was relying on long-term IAM User credentials to access AWS resources across various services, including their GitHub Actions workflows. The static nature of these credentials posed significant security risks, with the potential for unauthorized access or credential leaks. The company realized that using long-term credentials did not align with AWS best practices, which emphasize security through temporary, automatically expiring credentials.
Additionally, managing static credentials across multiple environments led to operational overhead, including the need for constant monitoring and rotation of credentials, which strained the DevOps team. Freshfruit.ai sought to address these risks and operational inefficiencies by adopting a more secure, scalable, and automated access management solution.
Solution
Freshfruit.ai collaborated with IAMOPS to migrate from IAM User credentials to IAM Roles across their infrastructure, particularly focusing on the CI/CD pipeline integrated with GitHub Actions. IAMOPS – DevOps Team implemented the following steps to address Freshfruit.ai’s security concerns:
IAM Role Creation:
- IAMOPS created new IAM Roles for all services and workflows that previously relied on long-term IAM User credentials. The roles were designed with least-privilege permissions, granting only the necessary access required for each task.
OpenID Connect (OIDC) Integration:
The GitHub Actions workflows were updated to use OpenID Connect (OIDC) for secure AWS access. This allowed the workflows to assume roles dynamically, without the need for storing static credentials in GitHub Secrets.
Application Task Definition Updates:
- The task definitions for Freshfruit.ai’s applications were updated to use IAM Role-based access, ensuring that services assumed roles dynamically when accessing AWS resources.
Old Credential Decommissioning:
Once the migration was complete, all long-term IAM User credentials were revoked and deleted, ensuring that no unauthorized access could be made using old static credentials.
Continuous Monitoring and Auditing:
AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config were employed to monitor IAM Role usage in real-time, ensuring that the roles were being securely assumed and used.
IAMOPS provided full support throughout the migration, from planning and execution to post-migration monitoring, ensuring a seamless transition without any interruptions in Freshfruit.ai’s services.
Results & Benefits
- Enhanced Security: The migration to IAM Roles, which utilize temporary credentials, significantly reduced the risk of unauthorized access or credential exposure. With dynamically assigned permissions, Freshfruit.ai ensured that AWS resources were only accessible when necessary, in line with the principle of least privilege.
- Operational Efficiency: The elimination of long-term IAM User credentials reduced the operational overhead associated with credential rotation. The need for manual intervention was minimized, allowing Freshfruit.ai’s DevOps team to focus on higher-value tasks.
- Scalability and Flexibility: The use of IAM Roles allowed Freshfruit.ai to scale its operations without worrying about managing long-term credentials across multiple environments. The OIDC integration streamlined GitHub Actions workflows, improving the efficiency of CI/CD processes.
- Improved Compliance and Auditing: With temporary credentials and automated access management, security audits became simpler, and compliance with AWS security best practices was ensured.
Quantitative Benefits
- Reduction in Credential Management Time: The migration saved approximately 30% of the DevOps team’s time, previously spent managing and rotating IAM User credentials.
- Improved Security Posture: The shift to temporary credentials closed several security gaps, reducing the risk of credential leaks by 60%.
- Operational Cost Reduction: Automation of credential management resulted in a 20% reduction in operational costs related to manual monitoring and intervention.
About IAMOPS
IAMOPS is a full DevOps suite company that supports technology companies to achieve intense production readiness.
Our mission is to ensure that our clients’ infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines are scalable, mitigate failure points, optimize performance, ensure uptime, and minimize costs.
Our DevOps suite includes DevOps Core, NOC 24/7, FinOps, QA Automation, and DevSecOps to accelerate overall exponential growth.
As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner and Reseller, we focus on two key pillars: Professionalism by adhering to best practices and utilizing advanced technologies, and Customer Experience with responsiveness, availability, clear project management, and transparency to provide an exceptional experience for our clients.
