🟠CIS AWS 1.16Rule: CIS-AWS-1-16critical

Restrict full admin policies

Description

No IAM policy grants full admin (*:*) privileges to users.

⚠️ Risk Impact

Full admin on user accounts = single-credential-compromise = full account takeover. Service-account specific.

🔍 How EchelonGraph Detects This

CIS-AWS-1-16Automated scanner rule

EchelonGraph's Tier 1 Cloud Scanner automatically checks for this condition across all connected AWS accounts. Violations are flagged as critical-severity findings with remediation guidance.

🔧 Remediation

Replace AdministratorAccess managed policy with custom least-privilege roles. Use SCPs at org level.

💀 Real-World Attack Scenario

47 IAM users had AdministratorAccess. One was phished; attacker had full account access immediately. Damage included data exfil + S3 bucket policy modifications + IAM persistence. Recovery: $4.2M.

💰 Cost of Non-Compliance

Over-privileged-user breach: avg $4.45M (IBM 2024).

📋 Audit Questions

  • 1.Users with AdministratorAccess?
  • 2.Justification per user?
  • 3.SCP enforcement?

🎯 MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

T1078 — Valid AccountsT1098 — Account Manipulation

⚡ Common Pitfalls

  • ⛔Admin granted for convenience
  • ⛔Admin role to service accounts
  • ⛔No SCP enforcement

📈 Business Value

Least-privilege IAM is foundational to limiting breach blast radius.

⏱️ Effort Estimate

Manual

40-80 hours initial least-privilege migration

With EchelonGraph

EchelonGraph identifies admin grants + recommends custom roles

🔗 Cross-Framework References

NIST-AC-6

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