IAM

• IAM allows you to manager users and their level of access to the AWS Console
• Centralized control of your AWS account
• Shared Access to your AWS account
• Granular Permissions
• Identity Federation
• Multi Factor Authentication
• Provide temporary access for users/devices and services, as necessary
• Allows you to set up your own password rotation policy
• Integrates with many AWS services.
• Supports PCI DSS Compliance
• Critical Terms:
• Users: End Users (Think People)
• Groups: Collection of users under one set of permissions
• Roles: Create roles and then assign them to AWS resources
• Policies: A document that defines one (or more) permissions

Roles

• Roles allow access to resources without ACCESS keys
• Roles are preferred from a security perspective
• Roles are controlled by policies
• You can change a policy on a role and it will take immediate effect
• You can attach and detach roles to running EC2 instances without having to stop or terminate these instances