Cloud Computing Intermediate

What is IAM (Identity and Access Management)?

A framework for managing digital identities and controlling who can access which cloud resources and services.

IAM defines who (identities) can do what (permissions) on which resources. Users, groups, and roles are assigned policies that grant or deny specific actions. The principle of least privilege dictates granting only the minimum necessary permissions.

IAM policies in AWS use JSON to define allowed/denied actions. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds extra security. Service accounts and roles enable secure machine-to-machine communication without long-lived credentials.

Related Terms

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)

An isolated virtual network within a cloud provider where you can launch resources with full control over IP addressing, routing, and security.

A storage architecture that manages data as objects with metadata and unique identifiers, ideal for unstructured data at scale.

Cloud Load Balancer

A managed service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure high availability and optimal resource utilization.

S3 (Simple Storage Service)

An AWS object storage service that stores and retrieves any amount of data from anywhere on the web.

Elastic Load Balancing

An AWS service that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets like EC2 instances and containers.

PaaS (Platform as a Service)

A cloud service model that provides a platform for developers to build, deploy, and manage applications without managing infrastructure.

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