Ensure no root account access keys exist
The root account has full administrative access to all resources. Access keys provide programmatic access to AWS and should never exist for the root account. If root access keys are compromised, the attacker has unlimited access.
Security Impact
Root access keys if leaked grant complete account control to attackers, including ability to create new users, delete resources, and access all data.
How to Remediate
Delete any access keys associated with the root account immediately. Navigate to Security credentials and delete all access keys. Use IAM users or roles with appropriate permissions instead.
Affected Resources
Compliance Frameworks
How TigerGate Helps
TigerGate continuously monitors your AWS environment to detect and alert on this misconfiguration. Here's what our platform does for this specific check:
- Continuous Scanning
Automatically scans all Identity and Access Management (IAM) resources across your AWS accounts every hour
- Instant Alerts
Get notified via Slack, email, or webhooks when this misconfiguration is detected
- One-Click Remediation
Fix this issue directly from the TigerGate dashboard with our guided remediation
- Compliance Evidence
Automatically collect audit evidence for CIS AWS v1.5.0, CIS AWS v2.0, SOC 2 compliance
- Drift Detection
Get alerted if this configuration drifts back to an insecure state after remediation
Check Details
- Check ID
- aws-iam-4
- Service
- Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Category
- Access Keys
- Severity
- CRITICAL
- CIS Benchmark
- 1.4
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