How to Write Policies, Control Access, and Secure an AWS Account

A Practical Guide to AWS IAM by Tamás Sallai_468 x 60 .png

This course is about how AWS IAM works and how to write policies to control access in an AWS account. In this course, you will learn how AWS APIs work, explore different parts of the requests made to the APIs and elaborates on how access is determined. Additionally, you will dive into how to configure access inside AWS by describing the policy structure and the 5 policy types AWS supports.

Further, you will become familiar with how the elements in the request and the policies fit together. You will also determine whether the operation is allowed or denied by demonstrating through several step-by-step realistic examples that show exactly how IAM evaluates access, thus providing templates for how to apply these protections to AWS environments.

Lastly, this course offers you some practical tips on how to secure an account both as an administrator and as a developer. It explains the best practices and the usual pitfalls of AWS security.

AWS Security Fundamentals: A Practical Guide to AWS IAM

All IAM policies follow the structure detailed in the previous lessons, but **how a policy behaves is determined by *what* it is attached to**. We can attach policies to 5 entities, and they are named accordingly:
* Identity-based policies: Attached to an IAM user, group, or role
* **Resource-based policies**: Attached to AWS resources
* **Service-control policies**: Attached to accounts
* **Session policy**: Attached to assume role sessions
* **Permissions boundary**: Attached to identities as a boundary

Learn about the first two policy types supported by AWS.

Introduction

Access Control Basics

User Management using IAM

IAM Policies

Request Evaluation Flow and Examples

Role Management Using Identity and Access Management (IAM)

How to Secure an AWS Account

Conclusion

Appendix

AWS IAM Policy types: identity-based and resource-based