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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Controls AWS principals, roles, policies, and resource access
Why learn AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
Teams use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to adopt cloud identity and access management without building the complete underlying platform themselves.
The problem it solves
Controls identities, roles, and permissions for cloud resources
Where it came from
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is Amazon Web Services's offering for cloud identity and access management. Its closest catalog counterparts are Microsoft Entra ID and Google Cloud IAM; they address the same broad need but are not feature-for-feature identical.
Build your understanding
Work through these exercises in order. Try the task before opening a reference.
- Explain the main responsibility of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
- Choose a workload that fits AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
- Identify one operational tradeoff of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
- Compare AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) with Microsoft Entra ID.
- Compare AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) with Google Cloud IAM.
Documentation and sources
- AWS cloud services catalog (aws.amazon.com)
Connect the ideas
Alternatives
Real World Example
Secure Logistics Data Access
A regional logistics firm managing sensitive shipping manifests across multiple departments.
The business problem
The firm suffers from over-privileged access where temporary contractors retain permanent permissions to sensitive databases, increasing the risk of unauthorized data exposure.
How this topic solves it
Implementing AWS IAM roles allows the firm to assign temporary security credentials to contractors, ensuring that access is scoped strictly to the duration of their tasks and the specific resources required.
- Define an IAM policy that specifies granular actions and resource ARNs for the shipping database.
- Create an IAM role that includes the defined policy for temporary contractor access.
- Configure trust relationships on the role to allow specific identity providers to assume the role.
- Require contractors to assume the role via the AWS CLI or SDK to receive short-lived session tokens.
- Audit access logs to verify that contractor permissions expire automatically after the session duration.
This diagram illustrates the relationship between the contractor, the IAM role, and the protected resource.
Temporary security container
JSON permission document
Protected resource
- Contractor → assumes (1:1) → IAM Role
- IAM Role → enforces (1:N) → IAM Policy
- IAM Role → accesses (1:1) → Shipping Database
Expected business outcome
The firm achieves a zero-trust posture where contractor access is ephemeral, reducing the attack surface by eliminating long-lived credentials.
Limitations and checks
A significant limitation is the complexity of managing trust relationships at scale; if the trust policy is misconfigured, it may inadvertently allow unauthorized entities to assume the role. This can be checked by reviewing the IAM policy simulator and monitoring CloudTrail for unexpected AssumeRole events.