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IAM Guidelines & Best Practices

  • Avoid using the root account except for initial account setup or emergency tasks.
  • Maintain a one-to-one mapping between real people and IAM users; never share credentials.
  • Organize users into groups and assign permissions to groups instead of individual users.
  • Enforce a strong password policy to enhance account security.
  • Require and enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all privileged accounts.
  • Use IAM Roles to grant permissions to AWS services or between accounts instead of sharing long-term credentials.
  • Use Access Keys only for programmatic access via CLI or SDK, and rotate them regularly.
  • Audit account permissions regularly using IAM Credentials Report and Access Advisor.
  • Never share IAM user credentials or access keys with others.