Managing IAM identities

In AWS, managing identities is a crucial aspect of maintaining secure and efficient access to your environment. In the following subsections, we will delve deeper into the types of identities and credentials used in AWS, review IAM users, groups, and roles, and explore the concept of external identities and federations in AWS. This integration allows you to align AWS IAM with external identity systems. We will also discuss best practices for managing IAM identities.

Managing both human and non-human identities

Human identities typically represent individual users having access to your environment. These users might be system administrators, developers, or business users who need access to AWS resources. Each human user is typically represented in AWS IAM as an IAM user. IAM users can be grouped into IAM groups for easier management. Each IAM user can be assigned individual security credentials, such as passwords and access keys.

Non-human identities, on the other hand, represent applications or services that need to interact with AWS resources, such as objects stored in an S3 bucket, or a DynamoDB table. These identities could be applications running on EC2 instances, AWS Lambda functions, or even on-premises. Non-human identities are typically represented as IAM roles.

Managing both human and non-human identities effectively is key to maintaining a secure and efficient AWS environment. This involves not only creating and configuring IAM users and roles but also regularly reviewing and updating their permissions to ensure that they have the least privilege necessary to perform their tasks. This principle of least privilege reduces the risk of unauthorized or unintended actions in your AWS environment.

Types of credentials and their use cases

In AWS IAM, there are two types of credentials: long-term and temporary.

Long-term credentials

Long-term credentials are typically associated with IAM users and can be used to directly access AWS services until they are manually revoked. These credentials include passwords and access keys. Their security can be enhanced by leveraging multi-factor authentication (MFA) devices.