Transfer data across AWS partitions with IAM Roles Anywhere

This article explains how to securely transfer data across AWS partitions using IAM Roles Anywhere instead of long-lived IAM credentials.

• AWS partitions are hard compliance boundaries with independent IAM instances; cross-partition trust policies are prohibited
• Legacy method used long-term IAM user access keys stored in Secrets Manager, violating security best practices
• IAM Roles Anywhere enables short-term credentials using X.509 certificates from external or AWS Private CAs
• Recommended architecture pulls data from Commercial partition into GovCloud partition using certificate-based authentication
• Two options: use existing external PKI or managed AWS Private CA service for certificate management
• Complies with FedRAMP boundary policies and NIST 800-53 standards for credential security

IAM Roles Anywhere provides a secure, compliant alternative for cross-partition data transfer without long-lived credentials.