IAM Security Tools

AWS IAM provides several built-in tools to help administrators audit permissions and improve security.

Credentials Report

The Credentials Report provides an account-wide view of IAM users and their credential status.

It helps answer questions such as:

• Which users have passwords?
• Which users have access keys?
• When was a password last used?
• When were access keys last rotated?
• Which credentials are inactive?

The report can be downloaded as a CSV file and is commonly used during security audits and compliance reviews.

Access Advisor

Access Advisor shows which AWS services a user, group, or role has permission to access and when those services were last accessed.

This helps identify permissions that are no longer needed.

For example:

• A user may have permissions for S3, EC2, RDS, and Lambda.
• Access Advisor may show that only S3 and EC2 have been used recently.
• The unused permissions can then be removed to follow the principle of least privilege.

Why These Tools Matter

Both Credentials Report and Access Advisor help improve security by:

• Identifying stale credentials
• Detecting inactive users
• Finding excessive permissions
• Supporting compliance audits
• Enforcing least-privilege access

IAMReadOnlyAccess

This managed policy allows users to view IAM resources without modifying them.

Multi-Session Support

AWS supports multiple sessions in the same browser, making account switching easier.

Key Takeaways

• Avoid using the Root User.
• Create IAM users for daily work.
• Use Groups to manage permissions.
• Policies define permissions.
• Use Credentials Reports to audit IAM credentials.
• Use Access Advisor to identify and remove unused permissions.
• IAM is a global AWS service.