🚀 Day 5 of My #100DaysOfCloud Journey — Exploring IAM (Identity and Access Management) in AWS Hello Cloud Enthusiasts! 👋 Today was all about secur
🚀 Aspiring Cloud & DevOps Engineer | AWS Free Tier User | Learning by Building
Hi, I’m Sukaran Mahajan — I am working as System Administrator and currently on a focused journey to become job-ready in AWS Cloud, DevOps, and Infrastructure automation. With a growing foundation in Linux, Git, Docker, and Terraform, I’m documenting everything I learn to help others and strengthen my understanding.
💡 Currently Learning: • AWS (EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, Lambda) • Docker, Terraform & Ansible • CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins) • Kubernetes basics
🛠 Hands-on Projects: • Flask + Docker App Deployment • Terraform-based AWS Infrastructure • EC2 SSH automation & S3 access control
📝 I also write beginner-friendly technical blogs on Hashnode: 🔗 https://devopswithsukaran.hashnode.dev
💼 Open to internships, DevOps/cloud roles, and collaborative projects.
Let’s connect and grow in tech together! 🔗
Hello Cloud Enthusiasts! 👋
Today was all about security and access control in AWS. I explored one of the most critical services — IAM (Identity and Access Management). Here's what I learned and practiced:
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🔐 What is IAM?
IAM stands for Identity and Access Management. It lets you:
Securely manage users, groups, and roles
Control who can access which AWS services and resources
Apply least privilege principle — giving only the permissions required
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🧠 Key Concepts I Covered
✅ IAM Users
Individual identities with long-term credentials.
I created a user named dev-admin and attached specific permissions.
✅ IAM Groups
Used to group users with similar permissions (e.g., Developers, Auditors).
Easier permission management.
✅ IAM Roles
Used for temporary access, especially for EC2 or Lambda to access other services securely.
✅ IAM Policies
JSON documents that define permissions.
Example: A policy to allow only S3 Read access.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": ["s3:GetObject"],
"Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket-name/*"]
}
]
}
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🛠 Hands-on Practice
Created a custom IAM policy using the policy generator.
Attached policies to a user and group.
Assigned a role to an EC2 instance to allow S3 access without storing AWS credentials.
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🧩 Real-World Example
Imagine you're a system admin in a company where developers only need access to deploy on EC2 and read logs from CloudWatch. You:
Create a Developer group
Attach a custom policy that only allows ec2:* and cloudwatch:Get*
Add developers to the group — Simple and Secure ✅
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🔍 Lessons Learned
IAM is foundational for cloud security.
Always follow least privilege access.
IAM roles are better than hardcoding access keys in code.
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📌 What’s Next?
Tomorrow, I’ll be diving into AWS CLI to manage resources from the terminal. Stay tuned! 💻