Service accounts
Google Cloud service accounts are a critical part of the platform. A cloud resource or workload uses a specific type of account. To make API calls, an application deployed (for example, Compute Engine, App Engine, or GKE) or a workload (Dataproc, Dataflow, and so on) utilizes service accounts. Using a service account as an identity, the application can access cloud resources (either in the same or a different project) based on the role it has been assigned.
There are some main differences between a service account and a user account:
- Service accounts have no ability to log in to the Cloud console like a normal user.
- Public and private RSA key pairs are used to authenticate the service account and sign the API request.
- A service account can be impersonated by a human or another service account.
- Service accounts are not visible in Cloud Identity because they belong to the Google Cloud managed domain. While service accounts can be added to a Google...
