Introduction

In this project I configured IAM users, groups and security policies following AWS security best practices.

The objective was to understand:

• IAM fundamentals
• user and group management
• console access
• MFA protection
• password policies
• security best practices

This project is especially useful for:

• cloud security fundamentals
• identity management learning
• access control implementations
• IAM understanding

Services Used

The project uses the following AWS services:

• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Architecture

The architecture consists of:

IAM User
   ↓
IAM Group
   ↓
Policies
   ↓
MFA

Users inherit permissions through groups and are protected using security policies and MFA.

Configuration

The IAM environment was configured using:

• IAM user creation
• console access
• IAM groups
• managed policies
• MFA
• password policy

Additional concepts explored:

• programmatic access
• access keys
• IAM roles
• identity management

Important Considerations

Some important IAM concepts:

Authentication → Who are you?
Authorization → What can you access?

Security recommendations:

• enable MFA
• avoid root usage
• rotate credentials
• apply least privilege
• use groups instead of direct permissions

Lessons Learned

This project helped reinforce:

• IAM fundamentals
• access control
• identity management
• policy inheritance
• security best practices

References

• IAM Introduction
• IAM Policy Examples
• IAM Best Practices
• IAM Roles
• IAM Password Policies

Final Result

Below is the final IAM user configuration.

IAM Graph

Below is the generated IAM relationship graph.

Project Code

You can find the Terraform code used in this project in the following GitHub directory.

View Terraform Directory

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