Skip to main content

IAM authentication should be configured for RDS instances

Severity: Medium

Resource Types: AWS::RDS::DBInstance

Description​

This control checks whether an RDS DB instance has IAM database authentication enabled.

IAM database authentication allows authentication to database instances with an authentication token instead of a password. Network traffic to and from the database is encrypted using SSL.

Remediation​

To remediate this issue, update your DB instance to enable IAM authentication.

To enable IAM authentication for an existing DB instance

  1. Open the Amazon RDS console.
  2. Choose Databases.
  3. Select the DB instance to modify.
  4. Choose Modify.
  5. Under Database options, choose Enable IAM DB authentication.
  6. Choose Continue.
  7. Under Scheduling of modifications, choose when to apply modifications. The options are Apply during the next scheduled maintenance window or Apply immediately.
  8. For clusters, choose Modify DB Instance.