AWS SES Policy - limit sending from specific users + email address + daily limit

Enhancing AWS SES Security: Limiting Sending Privileges

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cost-effective and reliable platform for sending emails from your applications. To maintain the integrity of your email service and prevent potential abuse, it's crucial to implement proper access control measures. This blog post explores various techniques to limit sending privileges based on specific users, email addresses, and daily limits.

1. Restricting Sending Permissions Using IAM

IAM (Identity and Access Management) is a fundamental service in AWS that allows you to manage user access to various AWS resources, including SES. You can leverage IAM to control who can send emails using your SES account.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "ses:SendEmail",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:ses:us-east-1:123456789012:identity/example.com",
            "Condition": {
                "Bool": {
                    "aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent": "true"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

2. Enforcing Daily Sending Limits with SES Policies

SES provides native policies that allow you to set daily sending limits for your account. This feature helps prevent unauthorized users from sending excessive emails, potentially leading to service disruptions or reputational damage.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ses:SendEmail",
        "ses:SendRawEmail"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "NumericLessThan": {
          "aws:DailySendVolume": 100
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

3. Implementing Fine-Grained Controls with Configuration Sets

Configuration sets are a powerful feature in SES that allow you to apply different sending configurations to specific groups of email addresses. You can leverage this capability to implement fine-grained access control and sending limits.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ses:SendEmail",
        "ses:SendRawEmail"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "ArnLike": {
          "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:ses:us-east-1:123456789012:configuration-set/my-config-set"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Conclusion

By implementing these techniques, you can effectively limit sending privileges in AWS SES, ensuring that only authorized users can send emails and that daily sending limits are adhered to. These measures help maintain the integrity of your email service, protect your reputation, and prevent potential abuse.