An IAM Overview
Imagine IAM as a security system for an office building. In this analogy, the office building represents your AWS environment, and each room inside it is an AWS resource, such as an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance, a Simple Storage Solution (S3) bucket, or a database. Here’s how IAM applies:
- IAM users as employees: Each employee (IAM user) has a unique ID badge (credentials) that allows them access to the building (AWS environment). Depending on their role in the company, some might have access to many rooms (resources), while others may only have access to a few. This can be mapped to the user permissions granted by IAM.
- IAM groups as departments: Different departments in the company (IAM groups) have common access needs. For example, the engineering team might need access to the server room and the development labs, much like an IAM group has specific permissions for its members.
- IAM roles as temporary passes: Sometimes, a visitor or a...
