IAM Role
An AWS identity that authorized people or services can assume to use a temporary session with specified permissions.
Key points
- 01 An IAM role is an AWS identity with permission policies; it has no standard long-term password or access keys of its own.
- 02 A role’s trust policy describes which principals it trusts. A caller can also need authorization to assume the role.
- 03 Permission policies describe actions and resources available to the role; other applicable policy checks can also limit a request.
- 04 Assuming a role creates a session using temporary credentials rather than making the caller the permanent owner of the role.
- 05 Temporary credentials can still authorize sensitive actions. Expiration alone is not a guarantee of a small incident impact.
- 06 Revoking older role sessions does not automatically prevent a still-authorized principal from assuming the role again.
- 07 Roles help workloads avoid embedding long-term IAM user keys, while appropriate permissions and credential handling still matter.
Follow the reviewed diagram below. A separate worked example is not available for this lesson yet.
Visual
sequenceDiagram participant C as Authorized person or service participant A as AWS C->>A: Request a role session Note over A: Check role trust and authorization A-->>C: Temporary session credentials C->>A: Request an AWS action Note over A: Evaluate applicable permissions
Follow the primary sources
- AWS IAM User Guide: IAM roles
Primary documentation supporting this written explanation.
- AWS IAM User Guide: Revoke IAM role temporary security credentials
Primary documentation supporting this written explanation.
- AWS role trust and permission policies
Primary documentation supporting this written explanation.
Written explanation: sources and review
The summary, key points and diagram were independently compared with primary documentation using AI on 2026-10-07. The approval is bound to this written content.
This text review does not approve a video or timestamp window. Human learner validation remains pending.
Practice · predict the result
Predict the role's permissions
A small test from your robot instructors. Hints are welcome.
What you will practice: Distinguish an allowed request, an explicit deny, and a request with no matching allow.
Sample scenario. Synthetic same-account example. Only the listed identity policy applies. These are simplified action and resource names; this is not deployable IAM configuration.
- Allow
s3:GetObject on reports/summary.csv, reports/payroll.csv- Deny
s3:GetObject on reports/payroll.csv- Read summary.csv
s3:GetObject on reports/summary.csv- Read payroll.csv
s3:GetObject on reports/payroll.csv- Delete summary.csv
s3:DeleteObject on reports/summary.csv
A worker has already assumed this role. Which of these requests will this sample policy allow?
Attempts stay on this browser and are kept separate from lesson views and your self-reported knowledge.
Sources and exercise scope
- AWS IAM: Evaluating requests to allow or deny access
Requests begin implicitly denied; matching explicit denies override allows, and other applicable policies can constrain access.
Original synthetic exercise, checked with AI against primary documentation on 2026-10-07. Human learner validation is pending. A result here records this attempt; it does not establish mastery.
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