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Difficulty: MediumIdentity and Access Management (IAM)

A startup is establishing its cloud presence and needs to set up administrative access for its system administrator. The administrator will be responsible for creating resources, managing network settings, and monitoring logs on a daily basis. What is the AWS-recommended best practice to configure this administrative access?

  1. A
    Use the AWS account root user to perform all daily administrative tasks to avoid permission blockages
  2. Create an individual IAM user for the administrator, grant the necessary administrative permissions, and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA)Answer
  3. C
    Request that AWS support manage the administrator's credentials and daily permissions under the shared responsibility model
  4. D
    Create a shared IAM role with access keys and distribute the keys to the administrator for direct command-line login

Answer

Create an individual IAM user for the administrator, grant the necessary administrative permissions, and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Creating an individual IAM user for the administrator, granting the necessary permissions, and enabling MFA aligns with AWS security best practices. This ensures accountability, limits the exposure of the root account, and adds an extra layer of security via MFA.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the security requirements for daily administrative access, recognizing that the root user should not be used.
Discard the option suggesting the use of the AWS account root user.
AWS security best practices dictate that the root user credentials should be locked away and used only for a few specific tasks.
2
Evaluate the customer's versus AWS's responsibilities in managing access credentials under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.
Discard the option proposing that AWS support manages user daily permissions.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) configurations are strictly the responsibility of the customer.
3
Determine the correct IAM entity and authentication setup for a human user requiring administrative access.
Identify that an individual IAM user with MFA is the recommended secure configuration, whereas roles are for temporary access and are not shared with static credentials.
An individual IAM user ensures accountability, enables MFA for security, and avoids sharing credentials or using temporary role configurations incorrectly.

Key Concept

AWS IAM Best Practices and Root User Security
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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