IAM User Direct Policies

What this rule checks

Detects IAM Users with policies attached directly (inline Policies or ManagedPolicyArns). CIS AWS Foundations 1.15 requires users to inherit permissions through groups.

How to fix it

1. 1Create an IAM Group with the required policies
2. 2Add the user to the group instead of attaching policies directly
3. 3Remove Policies and ManagedPolicyArns from AWS::IAM::User resources

import { User, ManagedPolicy } from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-iam';

new User(this, 'AppUser', {
  managedPolicies: [ManagedPolicy.fromAwsManagedPolicyName('AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess')],
});

import { User, Group, ManagedPolicy } from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-iam';

const group = new Group(this, 'ReadOnlyGroup', {
  managedPolicies: [ManagedPolicy.fromAwsManagedPolicyName('AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess')],
});
new User(this, 'AppUser', { groups: [group] });

CDK Insights pinpoints the exact file and line in your CDK source for every finding, so you can jump straight to the fix.

Affected resource types

Intentional? Suppress this finding

Sometimes a flag is deliberate — a genuinely public endpoint, say. You can dismiss iam-user-direct-policies and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "iam-user-direct-policies", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

Validations.of(scope).acknowledge({
  id: 'cdk-insights::iam-user-direct-policies',
  reason: 'Why this is intentional',
});

Use the rule ID iam-user-direct-policies shown above — not the CDK-* ID from SARIF / GitHub code scanning. To dismiss every finding on one construct instead, use ignorePaths. Suppression docs →

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