An introduction to AWS IAM and security best practices

<p>IT teams must ensure that only known and trusted users can access their organization’s vital applications and data.</p>
<p>Identity and access management (IAM) continues to be top of mind for businesses, especially with the popularity of AI. Machine identities vastly outnumber humans 82 to 1, according to the “2025 Identity Security Landscape” <a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.cyberark.com/threat-landscape/” rel=”noopener”>report from CyberArk</a>. These identities, which include AI, are being embedded into attacks, making them increasingly more efficient and successful. What’s worse is that 68% of respondents lack identity security controls for AI, according to CyberArk.</p>
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<p>Cloud users rely on services, like AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM), to secure and manage access across the vast portfolio of AWS services and resources — and even federate a level of access control between AWS and local data center resources.</p>
<p>Let’s examine AWS IAM in more detail, learn how it works, review common use cases and evaluate best practices for using AWS resources securely. Also, take a closer look at AI’s role in identity security.</p>
<section class=”section main-article-chapter” data-menu-title=”What are the fundamental concepts of AWS IAM?”>
<h2 class=”section-title”><i class=”icon” data-icon=”1″></i>What are the fundamental concepts of AWS IAM?</h2>
<p>AWS IAM is an Amazon cloud offering that manages access to compute, storage and other application services in the cloud. IAM’s primary capability is access and permissions. It provides two essential functions that work together to establish basic security for enterprise resources:</p>
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<li><strong>Authentication.</strong> Authentication validates user identities. It is typically handled by checking credentials — such as usernames and passwords — against an established database of credentials within the AWS IAM service. Advanced authentication might include multifactor authentication (MFA), which couples traditional credentials with a third form of authentica

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