Securing Multi-Tenant Saas Applications with Aws Iam: A Policy-Driven Approach

Abstract

A fundamental architectural feature of Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms is multi-tenancy, which maximizes resource usage and operational efficiency while allowing a single application instance to serve numerous clients. But there are serious security issues with this shared infrastructure approach, especially when it comes to maintaining stringent tenant isolation and scalable access control. This study investigates the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Identity and Access Management (IAM) in a policy-driven manner to secure multi-tenant SaaS applications. It describes multi-tenancy architectural approaches, identifies fundamental security issues including privilege escalation and data leakage, and shows how IAM's dynamic, tag-based rules can impose tenant-specific, fine-grained access controls. The research offers a scalable and compliant solution for safe SaaS installations by utilizing IAM features like session tags, resource-based controls, and AWS CloudTrail for audits. The results highlight how crucial it is to incorporate access control into the cloud architecture in order to improve data integrity among tenants and lower operational complexity.