The Top 20 AWS IAM Documentation Pages so Far in 2017

The following 20 pages have been the most viewed AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) documentation pages so far this year. I have included a brief description with each link to explain what each page covers. Use this list to see what other AWS customers have been viewing and perhaps to pique your own interest about a topic you’ve been meaning to learn about.

1. What Is IAM?
   Learn more about IAM, a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources for your users. You use IAM to control who can use your AWS resources (authentication) and how they can use resources (authorization).
2. Creating an IAM User in Your AWS Account
   You can create one or more IAM users in your AWS account. You might create an IAM user when someone joins your organization, or when you have a new application that needs to make API calls to AWS.
3. IAM Policy Elements Reference
   Learn more about the elements that you can use when you create a policy. View additional policy examples and learn about conditions, supported data types, and how they are used in various services.
4. Managing Access Keys for IAM Users
   Users need their own access keys to make programmatic calls to AWS from the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), Tools for Windows PowerShell, the AWS SDKs, or direct HTTP calls using the APIs for individual AWS services. To fill this need, you can create, modify, view, or rotate access keys (access key IDs and secret access keys) for IAM users.
5. IAM Best Practices
   To help secure your AWS resources, follow these best practices for IAM.
6. Tutorial: Delegate Access to the Billing Console
   Learn how to delegate access to specific IAM users who need to view or manage AWS Billing and Cost Management data for an AWS account.
7. The IAM Console and the Sign-in Page
   Learn about the IAM-enabled AWS Management Console sign-in page and how to sign in as an AWS account root user or as an IAM user. To help your users sign in easily, create a unique sign-in URL for your account.
8. How Users Sign In to Your Account
   After you create IAM users and passwords for each, your users can sign in to the AWS Management Console for your AWS account using your account ID or alias, or from a special URL that includes your account ID.
9. Using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in AWS
   For increased security, AWS recommends that you configure MFA to help protect your AWS resources. MFA adds extra security because it requires users to enter a unique authentication code from an approved authentication device or SMS text message when they access AWS websites or services.
10. Working with Server Certificates
    Some AWS services can use server certificates that you manage with IAM or AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). ACM is the preferred tool to provision, manage, and deploy your server certificates. Use IAM as a certificate manager only when you must support HTTPS connections in a region that is not supported by ACM.
11. Enabling a Virtual MFA Device
    Learn how to enable and manage virtual MFA devices from the AWS Management Console.
12. Overview of IAM Policies
    Read an overview of IAM policies, which define permissions.
13. Your AWS Account ID and Its Alias
    Learn how to find your AWS account ID and its alias.
14. IAM Roles
    You can delegate access to AWS resources using an IAM role. A role is similar to a user because it is an AWS identity with permission policies that determine what the identity can and cannot do in AWS. However, instead of being uniquely associated with one person, a role is intended to be assumable by anyone who needs it.
15. Example Policies
    This collection of policies can help you define permissions for your IAM identities.
16. Using an IAM Role to Grant Permissions to Applications Running on Amazon EC2 Instances
    Use an IAM role to manage temporary credentials for applications that run on an EC2 instance. When you use a role, you do not have to distribute long-term credentials to an EC2 instance. Instead, the role supplies temporary permissions that applications can use when they make calls to other AWS resources.
17. Tutorial: Delegate Access Across AWS Accounts Using IAM Roles
    Learn how to use an IAM role to delegate access to resources that are in different AWS accounts that you own.
18. Creating Your First IAM Admin User and Group
    Learn how to create an IAM group, grant the group full permissions for all AWS services, and then create an administrative IAM user for yourself by adding the user to the IAM group.
19. Using Instance Profiles
    An instance profile is a container for an IAM role that you can use to pass role information to an EC2 instance when the instance starts. Use the commands on this page to work with instance profiles in an AWS account
20. Temporary Security Credentials
    You can use the AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) to create and provide trusted users with temporary security credentials that can control access to your AWS resources. Temporary security credentials work almost identically to the long-term access key credentials that your IAM users can use.

In the “Comments” section below, let us know if you would like to see anything on these or other IAM documentation pages expanded or updated to make it more useful to you.

– Stephenie