Identity and Access Management - AWS service that controls who can access what resources. Like a bouncer at a club who checks IDs and decides who can enter which areas.
IAM policies ensure that developers can only access development resources, not production databases.
All major clouds provide IAM capabilities to authenticate identities (users, groups, workloads) and authorize actions on resources. AWS IAM focuses on policies, roles, and permissions for AWS resources. Azure commonly combines Microsoft Entra ID for identity (users, groups, apps) with Azure RBAC for permissions on Azure resources. GCP Cloud IAM uses roles and policies attached to resources, often paired with Cloud Identity for workforce identities. OCI IAM provides users, groups, dynamic groups, policies, and compartments for access control.