Use of NotAction in an Allow statement

Severity
Medium
Service
IAM
Check ID
IAM_NOTACTION_ALLOW

What this check finds

Using NotAction in an Allow policy almost always results in unwanted actions being allowed and should be avoided.

Passing looks like: No NotAction in Allow statements.

How to fix it

Rewrite the policy to use an explicit Action list instead of NotAction in Allow statements. This ensures only the intended permissions are granted.

AWS console

IAM → Policies → select policy → Edit policy → switch to JSON editor.

Compliance controls it is evidence for

A failing result counts against these controls in KloudLytics; a passing one is evidence towards them. How compliance mapping works

Compliance controls mapped to Use of NotAction in an Allow statement
FrameworkControls
NIST SP 800-53 Rev5 (Moderate)
  • AC-6 Least Privilege
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
  • PR.AA-05 Access permissions and authorizations are enforced with least privilege
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A
  • A.8.2 Privileged access rights

Checked on every scan

KloudLytics runs this check each time it scans a connected AWS account, through a read-only role, and lists every affected resource with its region. On Pro and Business a fix is written for the specific resource rather than the general case above. The exact access it needs

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