▷ What is AWS IAM? | AWS Identity and Access Management [2023] (2023)

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud provides users with a secure virtual platform to deploy their applications. It offers superior data protection compared to an on-premises environment at a lower cost. Among the various AWS security services, Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the most widely used. Allows users to securely control access to AWS resources and services. In addition, it helps create and manage AWS users and groups and provides the necessary permissions to allow or deny access to AWS resources. This article explains how AWS IAM works, features, and best practices.

What is AWS IAM?

AWSI AMis generally defined asIdentity and Access Management, which is recognized as one of the best web services that help provide secure control access to all AWS resources. You can use this IAM option to easily control authorized and unauthorized resources.

If you want to create this identity and access management, you must first create the AWS account. It's best to start with a single sign-in identity that can complete all possible sign-ins required to use AWS resources and services in each account. This specific identity can be designated as the root user of the AWS account, which can easily log in with potential users for any administrative or other tasks. Instead, to follow all best practices, it's best to be the first IAM user to create a new identity. You can then automatically back up the root user credentials, which are used to perform all administrative tasks.

IAM resources on AWS

IAM on Amazon Web Services provides the following features

1. Shared access to your AWS account:

Without sharing your password, you can access the other admin-related permissions as well as the resources of your current AWS account.

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2. Granular Permissions:

By using this granular permission, you can grant different permissions based on your skills. For example, you can provide full access to Amazon EC2, S3 (Amazon's lightweight storage services), and othersAWS Services. While the other users can grant read access along with Admin EC2 instances to access the billing information process.

3. Secure access to AWS feeds:

This IAM resource on AWS is used to protect all credentials that can successfully log in to EC2 instances. You can also grant them permissions to access your application for AWS services.

4. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):

By using MFA, you can add two-factor authentication not only for your account but also for individual users for extra security. Or you are the user who can provide a passkey or password to work with your account using a code specially set by the device.

5. Identity Federation:

Identity federation in IAM allows users who already have their passwords. For example, consider a corporate network X or an ISP to get temporary access to your current AWS account.

6. Warranty Identity Information:

You are using the Cloud Trail option for your AWS account, then you will definitely get the logs containing all the information performed based on your account resources. All of this information is commonly known as IAM identities.

7. PCI DSS Compliance:

IAM on AWS will fully support all data storage, transmission and storage by both providers and merchants to validate the claim with PCI (Payment Card Industry) DSS (Data Security Standard).

[Related blog:Was ist Cloud-Computing?]

How does IAM work?

Before creating users, everyone needs to understand how IAM works. IAM provides the best infrastructure required to handle all authorization and authentication for your AWS account. The following are some of the elements of the IAM framework.

Principle:

The principle of AWS IAM is nothing but an entity used to perform an action on the AWS resource. The IAM administration user is the first principle that can allow the user of certain services to have a role. You can deny support for federated users to allow the application to access your current AWS account. Roles, Users, Federated, and Applications are some of the principles of AWS.

Command:

When the principal tries to use the AWS Management Console, the API or CLI automatically sends the request to AWS. This specific information specifies the following information.

• The actions are considered as principles to be carried out.
• Actions are performed based on resources.
• The primary information includes the environment in which the request was previously made.

Authentication:

It is one of the most commonly used principles for logging into AWS when the request is sent there. However, it also consists of alternative services such asAmazonas S3which allows requests from unknown users. To authenticate through the console, you need to log in with your credentials such as username and password. But in order to authenticate, you must provide them with the secret and access key, as well as any additional security information required. It is highly recommended that MFA improve security services for your account.

Permit:

By authorizing the IAM values ​​generated from the request, the context checks any applicable policies and evaluates whether to allow or deny the specific request. All policies are stored in IAM as JSON documents and provide the specified permission to other resources. AWS IAM automatically looks for policies that specifically match the context of all your requests. If the single action is denied, IAM denies the entire request and regrets evaluating the rest, known as an explicit denial. The following are some of the logical evaluation rules for IAM.

• All requests are denied by default.
• Explicit can allow overrides by default.
• An explicit can also deny the substitution by allowing it.

Behave:

After your authorization or unauthenticated request is automatically processed, AWS approves your action in the form of a request. Here all actions are defined by services and things can be done through functions like create, edit, delete and view. To enable the action principle, we need to include all required actions in the policy without affecting the existing resource.

Resources:

After receiving approvals from AWS, all of your request actions can be performed on the associated resources in your account. In general, a resource is referred to as an entity that specifically exists within services. These resource services can be defined as a set of activities performed specifically for each resource. If you want to create a request, you must first perform an independent action that cannot be denied.

If you provide permissions through an identity-based policy in IAM, you must obtain all permissions that access resources from your own account. If you're looking for another account, you must make a request based on the policy that specifically allows all access from your account. Or you need to accept a resource-based policy within the account along with the required permissions.

What are the roles of AWS IAM?

The AWS IAM role is the same as the user as an AWS identity with specific permissions policies to determine the specific identity that can or cannot be created with AWS. You can also use similar roles to delegate specific access to users, applications, or other services to access AWS resources.

The AWS IAM roles are provided in detail as below

• You can increase security and get help protecting specific AWS resources and set up multi-factor authentication.
• The best practice for IAM users is to enable MFA for root accounts and privileged users.
• Multi-factor authentication can be easily configured

Based on security tokens

IAM users or AWS root users are primarily assigned hardware or virtual MFA devices

Based on One Time Password synchronization algorithms, it can easily generate a six-digit numeric code required at the time of the authentication process.

Based on SMS text message (preview mode)

1. Using users' phone numbers, IAM users can easily configure SMS-enabled mobile devices that receive a 6-digit code from AWS technology.
2. For IAM users only, SMS-based MFA is always available and mostly doesn't work for the AWS root account
3. Because root user and IAM user are separate entities, MFA must be enabled on their respective forms. In particular, enabling MFA in root does not primarily enable it for all other users.
4. The MFA device is activated with a single IAM user or AWS account
5. Assuming the MFA device suddenly stops working or is lost, then there is no authentication to log in to the AWS console and you will need to contact AWS Support to disable MFA
6. MFA protection can be easily enabled for the specific service API calls using condition bool that supports temporary security credentials.

What is the AWS IAM CLI?

You can only use the AWS IAM CLI with the appropriate role to sign in as an IAM user. It is provisioned as the externally authenticated user who is either already inheriting the role or when they actually progress through the role.Amazon EC2-Instancesattached to the instance profile function. This specific role is provided with a specific set of permissions that allow them to easily access AWS resources. It is mostly similar to the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user. There are a number of permissions or instructions to sign in with specific accounts.

The primary purpose of this section is to describe some of the common tasks related to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and to walk you through basic instructionsAWS command line interface.

AWS IAM Policy Generator

AWS IAM Policy Generator is considered to be the tool that supports or enables creation of various policies to control access to Amazon Web Services products and various resources. There are three basic steps that every user must follow in order to fully authenticate themselves.

• First you need to select a specific policy type
• Then add the appropriate statements
• And generate the policy as per the requirement

This is policy container for specific permissions where you can select one of the appropriate policies like IAM Policy, S3 Bucket Policy and SNS Topic Policy, SQS Queue Policy, Endpoint Policy of VPCs, etc. Then add the instructions in the respective policy to have a formal description for the single sign-on permission. The last, Generate Policy, is the document that serves as a container for one or more bulk statements.

Best Practices for AWS IAM

AWS IAM Best Practices help perform specific relative audits and remove all unused users and credentials. This is to protect AWS resources for specific AWS Identities and Access Management (IAM) services.

1. How to revoke the AWS account root user access keys
2. Creation of individual IAM users
3. If needed, use AWS-defined policies to assign permissions
4. Using specific groups to assign permissions to IAM users
5. grant the least privilege
6. Using Access Levels to Check IAM Permissions
7. The strong password policy settings for users

Frequently asked questions about AWS IAM

There are many AWS IAM FAQs to help you explore each concept in depth with simple methods and real-time scenarios.

1. Was ist AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
2. How do I start using IAM?
3. What problems does IAM solve?
4. How do users access AWS services?

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