Introduction to Identity and Access Management

Lab Details:

1. This lab walks you through creating IAM Users in your Project.

2. Duration: 20 Minutes

3. Region: Global

What is IAM?

• Stands for Identity and Access Management.

• IAM or Identity & Access Management is a field of Cloud Security (just like Network Security). It can be broken down into four key areas as displayed in the diagram.

• Cloud Service that helps the user securely control access to GCP resources.

• The first "identity" is the creation of a Google account which acts as a root user holding all permissions. By providing the G Suite, or Google email id, you can create an IAM user and you can assign minimum required roles to users.

• The primary resources in IAM are users, groups, roles, policies, and identity providers.

• You can also create an IAM Group for a set of users sharing the same permissions. E.g In a company with a lot of employees between different departments, each department can act as a Group sharing the same set of permission for all employees in that department.

• Simply, You are an IAM User (with some attached IAM Roles).

• Think of IAM Roles as capabilities.

• You give an IAM User capabilities (e.g. "Can create Cloud function", "can upload to Cloud Storage Bucket").

Lab Tasks:

• Login into GCP Console.

• Add 1 IAM User.

• Assign given Role to the user.