Introduction to AWS IAM — Identity and Access Management

A Beginners Guide to AWS IAM

In the complex world of AWS, where cloud computing empowers developers and enterprises alike, security and access control are critical components. The mainstay of AWS’s security toolkit is a powerful and adaptable service called AWS Identity and Access Management, or IAM for short.

The requirement for a centralized, secure access management system grows with the complexity of cloud systems. By acting as the gatekeeper, Aws Iam enables businesses to securely define and manage who can access Aws Services and resources. It’s important to clearly define what people can do once they’re inside, rather than merely focusing on who can enter.

1. Users

Users are the central component in the complex web of AWS IAM; they are unique entities that represent people or services that need access to AWS resources. To facilitate safe communication with AWS services, each user is assigned a distinct set of security credentials that include an access key ID and a secret access key.

In AWS IAM, permissions are defined through policies and various types of permissions can be assigned to IAM users.

Administrator Access is a powerful permission set in AWS IAM. When a user is granted Administrator Access, they essentially have unrestricted access to perform any action on any AWS resource within the account. This includes creating, modifying, and deleting resources across all AWS services.

2. Groups

Let me introduce IAM groups, a mechanism that aims to improve access control efficiency. Groups combine IAM users and offer a more efficient way to assign policies. Policies are attached to groups rather than being assigned to individual users, guaranteeing uniform access control among team members with comparable responsibilities.

IAM groups are best when they are simple. After a policy is granted to a group, all of the users that are included in it inherit those permissions. This promotes a methodical approach to access management by making it easier to scale permissions across different users.

Note: When adding a user to a group in AWS IAM, the permissions granted to that group are inherited by the user. If certain essential permissions are not assigned to the user through the group, the user won’t be able to perform actions within a specific sector or area of AWS services.

3. Roles

A role is a set of permissions that define what actions are allowed or denied for users or AWS services. IAM roles are not associated with a specific user or group; instead, they are assumed by trusted entities for a temporary duration. Roles are widely used to delegate permissions and facilitate secure access to AWS resources.

EC2 instances are frequently used with roles. Upon starting, an EC2 instance has the option to take on an IAM role, which enables it to safely access additional AWS services without storing long-term security credentials.

4. Polices

A policy is a document that specifies permissions in AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), permitting or prohibiting operations on AWS services. To allow or prohibit access to AWS resources and services, IAM policies are connected to IAM users, groups, or roles in JSON format. These policies can take many different shapes, but two prominent varieties are custom-managed policies and AWS-managed policies.

{
 "Version": "2012–10–17",
 "Statement": [
 {
 "Effect": "Allow",
 "Action": "*",
 "Resource": "*"
 }
 ]
}

given IAM policy grants a high degree of rights inside the AWS environment, reflecting a broad and permissive setting for access control. This policy’s broad reach is what makes it related to the “AdministratorAccess” permission.

With the “Effect” set to “Allow,” the indicated activities are viewed positively. Interestingly, the “Action” field has the value “*”, which denotes permission for any AWS service action — that is, it allows for practically any activity that one could want to perform throughout the entire range of AWS services. Similarly to this, the permissiveness is extended to any AWS resource by setting the “Resource” column to “*”. Essentially, this policy grants the IAM entity to which it is tied unlimited access, effectively representing a powerful set of permissions similar to those of an AWS administrator. Although having this much access is beneficial for administrative work.

Example Scenario

In our organization, we have employees across different departments, each requiring specific access to AWS resources. Alice and Bob are part of the administrative team, while Carol and Dave work in the finance department.

To manage access efficiently, we’ve organized our IAM structure with individual IAM users for each employee. Alice and Bob, as administrators, belong to the administrative access group, and Carol and Dave are part of the finance access group. These groups have associated policies outlining their respective permissions — for instance, the administrative access group has broad IAM permissions, while the finance access group is configured to read financial data from an S3 bucket.

We’ve added IAM jobs to the mix to give it even more flexibility. When necessary, a position called TemporaryAdminRole can grant temporary administrative access. This is a job that users, such as Carol from the finance department, can take on when they have certain administrative duties to complete. By doing this, we make sure that users only have the rights required for their regular tasks and uphold the principle of least privilege.

Roles have been introduced to allow for temporary elevation of access without jeopardizing our AWS environment’s overall security. We can balance the need for user-specific access with the sporadic need for temporary administrative powers with this IAM arrangement.

Integrating with other AWS services

One of the main components of protecting and controlling access to cloud resources is the integration of AWS IAM with different AWS services. By regulating user and application rights to AWS services, IAM acts as the gatekeeper. This integration makes sure that access is carefully calibrated and in line with the least-privileged principle.

IAM works perfectly with many other AWS services, such as Lambda, EC2, Amazon S3, and more. To govern who can start instances on EC2, read or write to an S3 bucket, or use Lambda to call serverless tasks, for example, IAM policies can be created. Beyond user rights, IAM’s granular control includes responsibilities for services, enabling safe cross-service communication.

The smooth integration of IAM with AWS services is essential to an organization’s cloud architecture because it guarantees that access is a well-planned symphony of permissions that are customized to the various requirements of cloud-based resources and apps, rather than just an authentication process.

Conclusion

IAM serves as both an access control tool and a strategic enabler in the dynamic world of cloud security, striking a careful balance between empowering users and protecting sensitive data.

Make sure to give it a clap 👏 if you found this information useful. If you have any suggestions for how to make it better, I’d love to hear them.

Introduction to AWS IAM — Identity and Access Management was originally published in Enlear Academy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.