AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) is Amazon's service for controlling who can authenticate and what actions they are authorized to perform across AWS resources — covering both human users and machine identities.
⚙️ How Does It Work?
AWS IAM manages users, groups, roles, and policies. IAM roles provide temporary credentials to AWS services, EC2 instances, and Lambda functions. Policies written in JSON define allowed or denied actions on specific resources.
📍 Where Is It Used?
Every AWS account — foundational to securing any workload running on Amazon Web Services.
💡 Real-World Example
A company's AWS environment has 500 IAM roles. A CIEM audit reveals 70% have never been used and 40% have wildcard permissions (Action: *). Remediation reduces the attack surface by removing unused roles and replacing wildcards with specific action lists.
🔗 Related Terms
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