Article ID: kb00105Last Modified: 09-Oct-2026

Granular Permission Policy for AWS S3 (Standalone Software)

Applies to the standalone version of Backup for Windows. Not applicable to Managed Backup Agent.

Situation

Assigning a full AWS S3 access permission policy to an IAM user is generally not recommended due to security considerations, so users are encouraged to use granular permission policies instead.

Solution

This granular policy includes the minimal set of permissions required to use all of the Backup software’s functionality, including retention and immutability:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetBucketLocation",
                "s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads",
                "s3:ListBucketVersions",
                "s3:GetBucketObjectLockConfiguration",
                "s3:PutBucketObjectLockConfiguration"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket_name"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts",
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:DeleteObjectVersion",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:GetObjectAcl",
                "s3:GetObjectVersion",
                "s3:GetObjectVersionAcl",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:PutObjectAcl",
                "s3:PutObjectVersionAcl",
                "s3:RestoreObject"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket_name/*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "sts:GetFederationToken",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {}
        }
    ]
}

Make sure to replace “bucket_name” with the name of the target bucket.