Amazon AWS Security
Internal
IAM User
An IAM user is a person, system, or application who can use AWS products, each with individual security credentials, all controlled by and billed to a single AWS account. With IAM, each user is allowed to do only what they need to do as part of the user's job.
TODO, continue with IAM concepts http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/IAM_Concepts.html
AWS root Account (ovidiu@novaordis.com) | +---- IAM Users | +-- ofeodorov
API Access Keys
Each IAM user has a set of API access keys. These keys are needed when the user attempts to make programmatic calls to AWS or EC2, using [Amazon EC2 CLI] tools for example. The user can create, modify, view and rotate these access keys.
There are two types of access keys 1) __Access key ID__ (example AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE) 2) __Secret access key__ (example: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY).
When creating an access key, IAM returns the access key id and the secret access key. The secret access key is only accessible at the time it was created. If the secret access key is lost, the corresponding access key must be deleted and recreated.
Relationship between Access Key ID and Secret Key?
Can be managed here: [1] by navigating to Users -> username -> Security Credentials -> Access Credentials.
More about access keys for IAM users: [2]
For details on how access keys can be set in the local environment, see
|[Amazon EC2 CLI#SetTheAccessKeys]