AWS Solutions Architect Associate 2025 Flashcards
To learn and retain more about AWS
What is an IAM role?
Entities you create and assign specific permissions to that are assumed by trusted identities such as workforce identities and applications to perform actions in AWS.
What is an IAM policy?
A policy is an object in AWS that, when associated with an entity or resource or role, defines their permissions. Most policies are stored in AWS as JSON documents.
What does IAM stand for?
AWS Identity and Access Management
What is an IAM user?
An entity that you create in AWS representing the human user or workload or application that uses the IAM user to interact with AWS. A user in AWS consists of a name and credentials.
What is a root user?
When you first create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, you begin with a single sign-in identity that has complete access to all AWS services and resources in the account. This identity is called the AWS account root user and is accessed by signing in with the email address and password that you used to create the account. The root user has special privileges like the ability to enable MFA or close the aws account.
It’s bad practice to use the root user for any actions.
How can you identify an IAM user?
• a freindly name (e.g. John)
• An ARN (an Amazon Resource Name)
• a unique identifier
How might an IAM role and IAM user interact?
You might assign a role with certain permissions to a user.
How might an IAM user be used?
Typically, to identify a human. It can also be used to ID an application, but using an IAM role is more appropriate for enhanced security.
Can you assign an IAM role to an IAM user?
Yes.
What kinds of IAM policies are there?
- Identity based policies
- Resource based policies
- Permissions boundaries
- Organizations SCPs
- Access control lists
- Session policies.
What are identity based IAM policies?
Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that control what actions an identity (users, groups of users, and roles) can perform, on which resources, and under what condition
What are resource based IAM policies?
Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource such as an Amazon S3 bucket. These policies grant the specified principal permission to perform specific actions on that resource and defines under what conditions this applies. Resource-based policies are inline policies
What are IAM permissions boundaries?
A permissions boundary is an advanced feature in which you set the maximum permissions that an identity-based policy can grant to an IAM entity.
What are service control policies?
SCPs are JSON policies that specify the maximum permissions for an organization or organizational unit (OU).
What are access control lists?
Access control lists (ACLs) are service policies that allow you to control which principals in an account can access a resource.
They are more straightforward and less flexible than resource based policies, but they are easier to do .
They are largely deprecated and are limited: For example, you can grant permissions only to other AWS accounts; you cannot grant permissions to users in your account. You cannot grant conditional permissions, nor can you explicitly deny permissions. ACLs are suitable for specific scenarios. For example, if a bucket owner allows other AWS accounts to upload objects, permissions to these objects can only be managed using object ACL by the AWS account that owns the object.
