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Cloud Computing · Intermediate

Service Control Policy (SCP)

AWS Organizations policy that sets the maximum available permissions for IAM principals in member accounts.

Definition

SCPs filter what IAM users and roles in member accounts can do, including the account's root user, but never grant permissions themselves. They are applied to the organization root, OUs or accounts and commonly deny actions such as leaving the organization, disabling CloudTrail or using unapproved regions.

Example

An SCP denies all actions outside eu-west-1 and eu-central-1 except for global services.

Exam tip

SCPs do not affect the management account or service-linked roles, and they only restrict; they never grant.

Related terms