Managing access using IAM

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources for your users. You use IAM to control who can use your AWS resources (authentication) and what resources they can use and in what ways (authorization).

ref: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/introduction.html

We will be using IAM for managing access (be it user or application) to services under our AWS account.

Securing the root account

When a new AWS account is opened, it comes with a single user (the account owner) also referred to as the root login. This almighty user has all the powers, including the option of terminating the AWS account. For this reason, it is often advised that the root login is only used for high-level account management purposes while any day-to-day operations are done via IAM user accounts.

We shall follow this recommendation, so the very first thing we do after registering an AWS account is to login as root, disable...