IAM Role vs IAM User
WHAT IT TESTS: identity model and credential hygiene. OUTLINE: a user is a fixed identity with long-lived credentials for a person; a role is assumable with temporary credentials for workloads or cross-account access.
WHAT IT TESTS: understanding of cloud identity types and credential lifetime. ANSWER OUTLINE: an IAM user represents a single permanent identity, usually a human, with long-lived credentials like a password or access keys. An IAM role is not tied to one identity; it is assumed temporarily by users, services, or other accounts and issues short-lived credentials via STS. Prefer roles for applications, EC2 instances, and cross-account access; reserve users for humans, ideally federated.
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- #iam
- #security
- #identity
- #credentials
- #cloud
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