Amazon Web Services Connector

EmpowerID provides connectors for a wide range of user directories and resource systems. As an administrator, you can use these connectors to quickly connect EmpowerID to your organization's identity-aware systems and applications. When you do so, you create an account store for that application in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse and use that account store to configure how you want EmpowerID to manage the identity information in that system.

EmpowerID Amazon Web Services (AWS) connector allows organizations to bring the user, group, role and computer data in their AWS domain to EmpowerID, where it can be managed and synchronized with data in any connected back-end user directories. When EmpowerID inventories AWS, it creates an account in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse for each Amazon user account, a computer for each Amazon computer, a group for each Amazon group, and a special group called an RBAC-Only group for each Amazon role.

After ensuring you have met the prerequisites, you do the following to connect EmpowerID to AWS:

1. Create an account store in EmpowerID for AWS.

2. Configure EmpowerID settings for the account store connection, including whether to provision EmpowerID Persons during inventory or in batches using the Account Inbox permanent workflow (recommended).

3. Review and configure the attribute flow rules for the account store.

4. Turn on inventory.

5. Enable the Account Inbox Permanent Workflow when ready—if you are using batch processing to provision Person objects from the inventoried user accounts. This is the recommended method.

6. Monitor Inventory.

Step 1 – Create an account store for AWS

1. On the navbar, expand Admin, then Applications and Directories, and click Account Stores and Systems.

2. On the Account Stores page, click Create Account Store.
   

   

    

3. Select Amazon AWS from the list of system types and click Submit.

   This opens the AWS Settings form, which is where you enter information about your Amazon AWS instance needed to connect EmpowerID to it.
   

   

    

4. Enter the following information in the AWS Settings form to connect EmpowerID to your Amazon instance:

   • Site Name — The address of your AWS site

   • Client API Key — The Access Key ID generated by Amazon for the service account

   • Client API Secret — The Secret Access Key generated by Amazon for the service account

   • Tenant ID — Tenant ID for your AWS site

5. Click Submit.

6. EmpowerID creates the account store and the associated resource system. The next step is to configure the attribute flow between the account store and EmpowerID.

Step 2 – Configure Attribute Flow

1. From the Account Stores tab of the Account Stores and Systems page, search for the account store you just created and click the Account Store link for it.

2. Click the Attribute Flow Rules tab to view the current rules for the account store. Please note that the attributes available depend on the account store.

3. To change the flow for an attribute, click the Attribute Flow drop-down located between the Person Attribute column and the External Directory Attribute column, and select the desired flow direction from the context menu.

4. To change the score for any of the available CRUD operations (Create, Update and Delete), enter the new score in the appropriate field. By default, scores are weighted evenly, which means that a change to an attribute originating in one connected external directory has the same authority as a change to an attribute occurring in another connected external directory.

Now that the attribute flow has been set, the next steps include configuring the account store and enabling EmpowerID to inventory it.

Step 3 – Configure account store settings

1. On the Account Store and Resource System page, select the Account Store tab and then click the pencil icon to put the account store in edit mode.
   

   

   
   This opens the edit page for the AWS account store. This page allows you to specify the account proxy used to connect EmpowerID to your AWS account as well as how you want EmpowerID to handle the user information it discovers in AWS during inventory. Settings that can be edited are described in the table below the image.
   

   

   
   

   Account Store Settings
   Setting	Description
   General Settings
   IT Environment Type	Allows you to specify the type of environment in which you are creating the account store.
   Account Store Type	Allows you to specify the type for the account store.
   Inventoried Directory Server	Allows you to select a connected server as the directory server for the account store.
   Is Visible in ITShop	Specifies whether the account store can be used to filter IT Shop resources to show resources, such as groups, contained in the account store.
   Authentication and Password Settings
   Password Manager Policy for Accounts without Person	Specifies the Password Manager Policy to be used for user accounts not joined to an EmpowerID Person.
   Provisioning Settings
   Allow Person Provisioning (Joiner Source)	Specifies whether EmpowerID Persons can be provisioned from user accounts in the account store.
   Max Accounts Per Person	Specifies the maximum number of user accounts that a person can have in the account store.
   Send All Changes to Outbox	Specifies whether all changes should be sent to the Provisioning Outbox for processing.
   Auto Process Outbox	Allows or disallows the Provisioning Outbox process to auto process accounts for this account store. Auto processing only occurs if Send All Changes to Outbox is enabled.
   Business Role Settings
   Allow Business Role and Location Re-Evaluation	Specifies whether Business Role and Location re-evaluation should occur for the account store
   Business Role and Location Re-Evaluation Order	Specifies the order of the account store for re-evaluating Business Roles and locations
   Inventory Auto Provision OUs as IT System Locations	Specifies whether EmpowerID should automatically provision external OUs as IT System locations
   Inventory Auto Provision External Roles as Business Roles	Specifies whether EmpowerID should provision Business roles for external account store roles
   Default Person Business Role	Specifies the default EmpowerID Business Role to be assigned to each EmpowerID Person provisioned from the user accounts in the account store.
   Default Person Location (leave blank to use account container)	Specifies the default EmpowerID Location to be assigned to each EmpowerID Person provisioned from the user accounts in the account store.
   Group Settings
   Allow Account Creation on Membership Request	Specifies whether EmpowerID creates user accounts in the account store when an EmpowerID Person without one requests membership within a group belonging to the account store.
   Recertify External Group Changes as Detected	Specifies whether detected group changes should trigger recertification.
   SetGroup of Groups to Monitor for Real-Time Recertification	Specifies the SetGroup to be used for monitoring group membership changes.
   Directory Clean Up Enabled
   Directory Clean Up Enabled	Specifies whether the SubmitAccountTermination permanent workflow should claim the account store for processing account terminations. When enabled, accounts in the account store that meet the qualifications to be marked for deletion are moved into a special location within the external directory, disabled and finally deleted after going through an automated approval process. This process involves setting a number of system settings in EmpowerID and requires multiple approvals by designated personnel before an account is finally removed from the account store.
   Report Only Mode (No Changes)	When enabled, a report of what the Directory Clean Up process would do is written to the log. The process itself is ignored and all accounts are set to Termination Pending,
   Special Use Settings
   Automatically Join Account to a Person on Inventory (Skip Account Inbox)	Specifies whether EmpowerID should attempt to join user accounts in the account store to an existing EmpowerID Person during the inventory process. When enabled, the Account Inbox is bypassed.
   Automatically Create a Person on Inventory (Skip Account Inbox)	Specifies whether EmpowerID should create new EmpowerID Persons from the user accounts discovered in the account store during the inventory process. When enabled, the Account Inbox is bypassed.
   Queue Password Changes on Failure	Specifies whether EmpowerID should send password changes to the Account Password Reset Inbox only when the change fails.
   Membership Settings
   Enable Group Membership Reconciliation	Allows EmpowerID to manage the membership of the account store’s groups, adding and removing user to and from groups based on policy-based assignment rules.
   Membership Schedule Interval	Specifies the time span that occurs before EmpowerID runs the Group Membership Reconciliation job. The default value is 10 minutes.

2. Edit the account store as needed and then click Save to save your changes.

Next, enable the Account Inbox permanent workflow to allow the Account Inbox to provision or join the user accounts in AWS to EmpowerID Persons as demonstrated below.

Step 4 – Enable Account Inbox Permanent Workflow

1. On the navbar, expand Infrastructure Admin > EmpowerID Server and Settings and select Permanent Workflows.

2. On the Permanent Workflows page, click the Display Name link for Account Inbox.

   

3. On the Permanent Workflow Details page that appears, click the pencil icon to put the workflow in edit mode.

   

    

4. Check Enabled.

   

5. Click Save to save your changes.

Step 5 – Monitor Inventory

1. On the navbar, expand Identity Lifecycle and select Account Inbox.
   
   The Account Inbox page appears. This page provides tabbed views of all information related to processing new user accounts discovered in a connected account store during inventory. An explanation of these tabs follows.
   

   

   • All — This tab displays a grid view of all user accounts and the status of those accounts in relation to the Account Inbox.

   • Dashboard — This tab provides a quick summary of account inbox activity.

   • Orphans — This tab displays a grid view of all user accounts without an EmpowerID Person.