IAM Groups in AWS: Streamlining User Access and Simplifying Permissions

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, managing user access to cloud resources is crucial for maintaining a secure and efficient environment. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) offers a comprehensive solution to address this challenge. One of the key features within IAM is the concept of user groups.

What are IAM Groups?

IAM groups are virtual containers within AWS IAM that allow you to organize users based on their roles, responsibilities, or access requirements. Instead of individually assigning permissions to each user, you can assign permissions to a group, making it easier to manage access control.

Characteristics of user groups

A user group has the capability to include multiple users, and an individual user can be a member of multiple user groups.

User groups cannot be organized hierarchically within each other; they can only consist of individual users and not other user groups.

By default, there is no pre-existing user group that automatically includes all users in an AWS account. To have such a user group, you need to manually create it and assign each new user to it.