Introduction To AWS Identity and Access Management
Tags: webdev, beginners, aws, career
Published: 2022-01-27 06:27:28

AWS is the abbreviated term of Amazon Web Service. It is one of the best Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools. It is essential for any enterprise that is taking its cybersecurity seriously to have an identity and access management (IAM) solution and it is the apt option for them. One can point out who can access which services and resources, as well as under which conditions with IAM. To ensure least-privilege permissions, you can manage permissions to your workforce and systems with IAM policies.

But what is AWS? How will it help enterprises? What are its features? How can you use it to solve the IAM problem? Why choose this? How to get started? What is its pricing? Are these questions wandering in your mind? No worries! Sennovate is here to answer all your questions. So, be with us and find the answer to all your questions.

So, let’s get started!

## What Is AWS IAM?
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that empowers you to securely control access to resources. To limit who is authenticated (signed in) as well as authorized (has permissions) to use resources, you can use AWS IAM.

You even mark who can access what by specifying fine-grained permissions with the help of AWS IAM. After that IAM executes those permissions for each request. By default, Access is denied and access is granted only when permissions specify an “Allow.”

AWS IAM leverages three main things for managing the identities and access that includes Users, Groups, and Permissions.

Users: It includes actual AWS customers and it is used to authenticate individual user identities and provision access.

Groups: It means the collection of users. It enables admins to manage multiple users at once.

Permissions: It regulates which AWS resources a particular user or a group of users has permission to access and the actions they are permitted to perform.

## How Will AWS Help Enterprises?
In this competitive world, Small and medium businesses have to adopt new working models and have to generate new revenue streams. This allows them to respond quickly to customer needs as well as timely improve products and services. It will also help businesses to reduce costs and free up resources for critical projects.

Millions of businesses over the globe have created values and driven innovation through low-cost, on-demand cloud solutions with the help of Amazon Web Services.

## Features Of AWS
Shared access to the AWS account
The main feature of AWS IAM is that it enables you to have different usernames and passwords for individual users or resources and assign access.

Granular Permissions
According to the request, you can put restrictions on certain accesses. For instance, you can enable the user to download information, but deny the user the to update information through the policies.

Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
AWS IAM comes with the support of MFA, in which users provide their username and password along with a one-time password (OTP) from their phone. A number that will generate randomly is used as an additional authentication factor.

Identity Federation
Through Facebook or Google, if the user is already authenticated, AWS IAM accepts that authentication method and then allows access based on it. You can allow users to have just a single password for both on-premises and cloud environment work with the help of this.

Free to Use
There is no extra charge for AWS IAM security. As well as there is no extra charge for creating additional users, groups, or policies.

Attribute-based Access Control
An authorization strategy is called Attribute-based access control (ABAC). To create fine-grained permissions based on user attributes, for instance, department, job role, and team name you can use this strategy. You can decrease the number of different permissions that you need for creating fine-grained controls in your AWS account with the help of ABAC.

Password Policy
The AWS IAM password policy enables you to remotely reset a password or rotate passwords. You can even create the rules, for example how a user should create a password or how many times a user may make to provide a password before being denied access.

## What Problems Does AWS IAM Solve?
It is easy to provide multiple users with secure access to your AWS resources with the help of AWS IAM. It empowers you to:

Manage IAM Users and Their Access: In AWS’s identity management system you can create users as well as assign users individual security credentials for example access keys, passwords, multi-factor authentication devices. Along with this, you can even request temporary security credentials to give users access to its services and resources. You can also enumerate permissions to control which operations a user can perform.

Manage Access for Federated Users: With configurable expirations for users who you manage in your corporate directory, allowing you to provide your employees and applications secure access to resources in your account without creating an IAM user account for them. You can enumerate the permissions for these security credentials to control which operations a user can perform.

## Why Choose AWS IAM?
The main reason to choose AWS IAM is to manage AWS user identities and their different levels of access to the resources. For instance, AWS users can be created as well as assigned individual security credentials (e.g. passphrases, SSH keys, MFA), allowing permission to access or deny at any time.

Because of this, enterprises gain granular control over who has can access their resources, which resources are available, and the actions authorized users can perform within their provisioned resources.

The outcome is a highly secure and efficient approach for connecting AWS users to the resources which are needed to succeed. Currently, 90+ fully-featured resources and utilities are available from this so it’s easy to see why having the ability to manage access is important.

## How To Get Started With AWS IAM?
To start using IAM, you must subscribe to at least one of the AWS services that are integrated with IAM. You can create and manage users, groups, and permissions via IAM APIs, the AWS CLI, or the IAM console. This gives you a point-and-click, web-based interface. You can also use the visual editor to create policies.

## What Is The Pricing?
IAM is a feature of your AWS account offered at no additional charge. So, you will be charged only for the use of other services by your users.

For more on AWS and its various tools, you can check our [Talk](https://youtu.be/9W_onzIAo1c) on AWS Cognito to learn everything about AWS and its service – Cognito.

## Wrapping Up
Hope this guide helps you to understand what AWS IAM is and how it will help your organization. If you want to take cybersecurity seriously, you must consider having an identity and access management (IAM) solution and it is the apt option for them. We at [Sennovate](https://sennovate.com/) make it easy for you to get started with AWS IAM.

Have any queries or want to have a call with us to know more about AWS IAM? Contact us right now by [clicking here](https://sennovate.com/contact-sennovate/). Sennovate’s IAM Experts will explain everything and solve all your queries. You can also write a mail to us at sales@sennovate.com or call us on (925) 918-6618.