Introduction to IAM
Identity and Access Management (IAM) refers to the concept of managing the entire user life cycle, including provisioning (that is, account creation), assigning permissions, and, finally, account deprovisioning (that is, when a person leaves the organization, or the account is no longer necessary).
Access management is made up of the following main concepts:
- Identity: This indicates a user, computer, service, or role that wishes to access a system or application and take actions (from accessing shared storage to querying a database and pulling information).
- Authentication: This is the process of proving that a specific identity (such as a user) is who they claim to be (for example, providing a username and password that match the user's records on a central user repository).
- Authorization: This is the process of granting an authenticated identity (such as a user) the permissions to take actions on a resource (such as allowing a user to upload...
