Introduction

Nowadays AWS IAM has become the most demanding and high-paying job. But due to these, competition for jobs also increased. Now to beat the competition you will have to prepare wisely. To help you with this, we have selected some most asked AWS IAM Interview Questions that will help you enhance your knowledge. So let’s read these questions carefully

Question – 1) What is AWS IAM?

Answer – AWS IAM stands for Identity and Access Management. This is a web service provided by AWS. IAM is a fundamental component of AWS security and helps define who can do what within the AWS infrastructure. It also provides a scalable and secure way to manage access that helps create and maintain a secure cloud environment. Here are some key uses of AWS IAM

  • User Management
  • Permission Management
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
  • Federation with External Identity Providers
  • Fine-Grained Access Control
  • Access Key Rotation

Question – 2) What are the components of an IAM in AWS?

Answer – Here are the main components of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

  • User – It represents individual AWS account holders and each user has their own unique identity.
  • Group – Groups help apply permissions to a group of users instead of granting permissions to each user individually.
  • Roles – IAM roles are similar to IAM users but they are temporary
  • Policies – IAM policies are a set of documents that list permissions related to actions, resources, and conditions.
  • Permissions – It defines who can do what within the AWS infrastructure.
AWS IAM Interview Questions
AWS IAM Interview Questions

Question – 3) What is an IAM group and how does it simplify user management?

Answer – An IAM group is a collection of IAM users in AWS. This provides a way to define permissions for multiple users in a single action rather than granting permissions to each user individually. Here are some key points on how IAM groups simplify user management

  • Provide a collection of users to grant any permissions
  • Simplified Policy Management
  • IAM groups improve scalability and efficiency in case of large numbers of users.
  • Ease of Onboarding and Offboarding
  • Helps in organizing users based on common characteristics.

Question – 4) What is MFA in IAM, and why is it important?

Answer – MFA stands for Multi-Factor Authentication in AWS. It is used for security purposes and provides another layer of security for access to AWS resources and user sign-in. It reduces the risk of unauthorized access by providing extra security. Here are some of the importance of MFA in AWS

  • Enhanced Security
  • Credential Protection
  • Prevention of Unauthorized Access
  • Privileged User Protection
  • Mitigation of Phishing Attacks

Question – 5) What are some IAM best practices for security?

Answer – Below are some AWS IAM best practices for security

  • Enforce strong password policies
  • Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
  • Regularly Review and Rotate Credentials
  • Implement the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP)
  • Leverage IAM Roles for Cross-Account Access
  • Enable CloudTrail for Logging and Monitoring
  • Use IAM Roles for EC2 Instances
  • Implement IAM Conditions for Fine-Grained Control
  • Monitor and Respond to IAM Events

Question – 6) What is the difference between the IAM user and the IAM role?

Answer –

IAM User IAM Role
Identity Represents permanent identities Represents temporary identities
Entities Represent human users Non-human entities such as AWS services or applications
Permissions Have Direct permission

Have Assumed Permissions
Console Login Have directly logged in to the AWS Management Console IAM roles are not directly logged in

 

Question – 7) What are the features of AWS Security Token Service (STS)?

Answer – Here are some of the key features of the AWS Security Token Service

  • AWS STS provides temporary Security Credentials
  • Supports access key rotation and improves the security of access keys
  • Provide Cross-Account Access
  • Provides role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Grant policy-based access control

Question – 8) Explain the difference between authentication and authorization in IAM.

Answer – 

Authentication Authorization
Definition It verifies the identity of a user It determines what actions and resources are allowed to access.
Timing Occurs at login time Occurs after successful authentication
The layer of Security The first layer of security

The second layer of security
Technologies It involves passwords, biometrics, or multi-factor authentication It involves policies, roles, and permissions

 

Question – 9) What is the AWS Management Console?

Answer – It is a web-based graphical user interface provided by AWS The AWS Management Console allows users to access, monitor, and manage AWS resources easily.

Some of the key features of AWS Management Console are

  • Service Dashboard
  • Service Navigation
  • Resource Management
  • Monitoring and Logging
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM)
  • Billing and Cost Management

Question – 10) What is the purpose of the IAM Access Advisor?

Answer – The IAM Access Advisor provides information about access permissions associated with IAM users, roles, and groups. The main purpose of Access Advisor is to manage access permissions and provide advanced security in AWS.

Conclusion

I hope you read the entire blog carefully and learn something. We tried to cover some of the most important interview questions on AWS IAM. Yes, we know their a lot of things to learn but it’s not possible to cover all the knowledge in a single blog. If you want to know more in-depth you can contact us. we will help you. Many students get their dream job with the help of ThinkCloudly. We can help you too. just contact us.