Why should I use IAM?

AWS Identity and Access Management is a powerful tool for securely managing access to your AWS resources. One of the primary benefits of using IAM is the ability to grant shared access to your AWS account. Additionally, IAM allows you to assign granular permissions, enabling you to control exactly what actions different users can perform on specific resources. This level of access control is crucial for maintaining the security of your AWS environment. IAM also provides several other security features. You can add multi-factor authentication (MFA) for an extra layer of protection, and leverage identity federation to seamlessly integrate users from your corporate network or other identity providers. IAM also integrates with AWS CloudTrail, providing detailed logging and identity information to support auditing and compliance requirements. By taking advantage of these capabilities, you can help ensure that access to your critical AWS resources is tightly controlled and secure.

Shared access to your AWS account

You can grant other people permission to administer and use resources in your AWS account without having to share your password or access key.

Granular permissions

You can grant different permissions to different people for different resources. For example, you might allow some users complete access to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift, and other AWS services. For other users, you can allow read-only access to just some Amazon S3 buckets, or permission to administer just some Amazon EC2 instances, or to access your billing information but nothing else.

Secure access to AWS resources for applications that run on Amazon EC2

You can use IAM features to securely provide credentials for applications that run on EC2 instances. These credentials provide permissions for your application to access other AWS resources. Examples include S3 buckets and DynamoDB tables.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

You can add two-factor authentication to your account and to individual users for extra security. With MFA you or your users must provide not only a password or access key to work with your account, but also a code from a specially configured device. If you already use a FIDO security key with other services, and it has an AWS supported configuration, you can use WebAuthn for MFA security. For more information, see Supported configurations for using passkeys and security keys

Identity federation

You can allow users who already have passwords elsewhere—for example, in your corporate network or with an internet identity provider—to access your AWS account. These users are granted temporary credentials that comply with IAM best practice recommendations. Using identity federation enhances the security of your AWS account.

Identity information for assurance

If you use AWS CloudTrail, you receive log records that include information about those who made requests for resources in your account. That information is based on IAM identities.

PCI DSS Compliance

IAM supports the processing, storage, and transmission of credit card data by a merchant or service provider, and has been validated as being compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). For more information about PCI DSS, including how to request a copy of the AWS PCI Compliance Package, see PCI DSS Level 1.