Cloud Identity & Access (IAM) From First Principles

Short summary

IAM (Identity and Access Management) is the foundation of cloud security, answering one question per request: can this identity perform this action on this resource? The four core concepts—principal, action, resource, and effect—map to everyday ideas, and the default-deny model means access must be granted explicitly. The biggest practical upgrade is replacing long-lived access keys with short-lived, auto-rotating roles to enforce least privilege and reduce breach risk.

• •IAM evaluates every request as identity + action + resource + allow/deny
• •Default-deny model: nothing is allowed unless explicitly granted; explicit Deny always wins
• •Prefer short-lived roles over long-lived access keys to enforce least privilege and reduce breach risk

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.