What is AWS IAM?

AWS IAM is a global AWS service that manages authentication & authorization.

It helps to control who can access AWS resources and what actions they can perform.

What does IAM feature?

In IAM, it it possible to define:

  • Users;
  • Groups;
  • Roles;
  • Policies.
IAM

Users

  • Individual identities with credentials;
  • Users are people within an organization and can be grouped.

Groups

  • Collections of users with shared permissions;
  • Can only contain users, not other groups.

Roles

  • Provide temporary access for AWS services or external entities.

Policies

  • JSON documents that define permissions.