The AWS Identity and Access Management service, commonly known as IAM is one of the first AWS security services that you will come across when working with AWS. It’s the central service for administering user accounts allowing them to gain access to your AWS resources. From user creation, password policies, access policies, roles, groups, and more, understanding AWS IAM is essential if you are looking to enforce stringent security controls within your AWS accounts.  

In this learning path I will be looking at IAM from many different perspectives and cover the following learning objectives via our courses and hands-on labs:

Learning Objectives

• Understand what is meant identity and access management and the difference between authentication, authorization, and access control
• Learn the components of IAM as well as its reporting features
• Learn the essentials of users within IAM
• Understand how to create, manage, and configure users using security best practices
• Learn how to manage multiple users with IAM User Groups
• Gain a foundational understanding of IAM roles
• Understand how to use AWS service roles to access AWS resources on your behalf
• Learn how to use IAM user roles to grant temporary access to users
• Understand how to use roles for federated access
• Understand the different types of IAM policies you can expect to see when working within IAM
• Learn how to implement policies effectively to build secure and robust access controls for your users
• Learn how to read IAM policies to understand the permissions they are granting and restricting
• Learn how policy evaluation logic operates
• Understand the core principles of cross-account access using IAM

Intended Audience

This learning path has been designed for those who are responsible for securing access to AWS resources. It would also be advantageous to anyone looking to take an AWS certification.

Prerequisites

You should have a basic understanding of AWS core services