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Cloud · Extra High-Value

What is IAM?

Easycloud-21
iamsecurityleast privilegeroles

Question

What is IAM in cloud platforms, and why do data engineers care?

Solution

IAM (Identity and Access Management) controls *who* can do *what* on which resources. Users, roles/service accounts, groups, and policies grant or deny actions like s3:GetObject or bigquery.jobs.create.

Human user / CI / Spark job
        |
     assumes ROLE / service account
        |
     POLICY allows: read lake bucket, write curated bucket

Core ideas

  • Identity: user, role, service account
  • Policy: allow/deny statements on actions + resources
  • Least privilege: grant only what the job needs
  • Prefer roles for apps over long-lived user keys

DE failure mode

An ETL role with * on all buckets leaks PII if the job is compromised. Separate raw vs curated permissions.

Interview tip: "IAM = who can do what." Say least privilege + roles for pipelines, and never embed permanent admin keys in code.

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