Identify AWS Access Management Capabilities

AWS Identity and Access Management give access across all of the AWS. With the help of IAM, users can choose who can access the services and specify the services to be used. It helps you securely manage the access and control of all the AWS resources. 

You start with a single-sign-in identity when you first create your AWS account. This identity is known as the root user. Through that account, you can use all the AWS services and resources. But it is recommended that you don’t use the root user identity to perform your daily tasks and instead use it to create your IAM user.

Before going into the details of AWS concepts and topics mentioned in the syllabus, make sure to learn about the prerequisites for the AWS cloud practitioner certification exam. 

Why Should You Use IAM?

IAM lets you securely share the information and access AWS resources. Before IAM or AWS, information was shared in an insecure manner. Now IAM works securely by confirming the identity of the entity trying to use the AWS resources. It does so by asking the entity to give the credentials for validating the identity. 

Consider the following features of IAM in AWS:-

1. IAM allows you to manage the access and users through security credentials. The organizations can control and decide which operation a user can perform. 

2. You can assign roles in IAM and control which operation would be completed by which entity and what role would be given to the entity. 

3. You can give access to AWS Management Console to the identities without creating a separate entity for every IAM user. 

1. Access and Federation

You can give access to other people to use and administer the AWS resources in your account without sharing the access key or password. 

The users who already have the Internet Identity Provider or Corporate Active Directory password can access your AWS account. 

2. Granular Permissions

Different people can access various resources with the help of Granular Permissions. For example, you can grant complete access to some users for Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon EC2, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Simple Storage Service, etc. You can allow access to only a few S3 buckets or approval to manage only a few EC2 instances for other users. 

IAM provides a way to have specific conditions like controlling how a user can use AWS, handling whether they can originate the IP address, or authenticate with a multi-factor authentication device. 

The AWS Security Token Service is used for generating session permissions. It specifies the policies managed by IAM. It also allows you to restrict permissions for some sessions. When a user takes a role in an AWS session, you can define IAM-managed policies as session policies. 

There are four types of permissions as listed below:-

• Service-Level Permission:- Applicable to various API parts that don’t have a particular resource.
• Execution-Level Permission:- Applicable to all API parts acting on a particular execution.
• State-Machine Level Permission:- Applicable to those components of the API that act on a particular state machine. 
• Activity-Level Permission:- Applicable to all the parts of API that perform on a particular activity or instance of an activity.

3. Securing Application Access

The IAM feature can securely give credentials to the applications working on the EC2 instances to use other AWS resources like DynamoDB, S3 Buckets, etc.

4. Multi-Factor Authentication

Organizations can add two-factor authentication to individual users and their accounts for safety and security. Multi-Factor Authentication gives users the option of sharing both the code from a configured device and the password or access key.

Besides theoretical knowledge, boost your certification preparation by learning some useful tips for the AWS cloud practitioner exam.

Let us now explore how you can use IAM. 

Accessing IAM 

You can access the AWS Identity and Access Management Capabilities in the following manner:-

1. AWS Management Console

With the help of a browser-based console, you can handle the AWS resources and IAM. 

2. AWS Command Line Tools

The command-line tools are used to give commands to your system for performing AWS functions and tasks. They help create the scripts that perform the AWS tasks and processes. It is faster and more convenient than the console. 

3. AWS SDKs

The Software Development Kits are a set of sample code for multiple programming platforms and languages. It helps give programmatic access to AWS and IAM. And it deals with functions like managing users, signing requests, retrying requests, etc. 

4. IAM HTTP API

IAM HTTPS API helps you access the AWS and IAM programmatically. With the help of IAM HTTPS API, you can directly give HTTPS requests to the service. 

To Sum Up

Through IAM, you can control and decide who can use the resources and services. And IAM features come free of cost to your account. So, it is free to use. We hope this guide gave a clear understanding of the IAM and AWS security. 

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