✅ IAM Best Practices
A quick rundown of the habits that keep an AWS account secure and prevent the most common mistakes.
🚫 Don't use the root account day-to-day. It's for initial setup only — after that, work from your own IAM user.
👤 One person, one user. Never share credentials between people — create a separate IAM user for each person instead.
👥 Assign permissions through groups, not individual users. It's the same access, but far easier to manage as things grow.
🔑 Enforce a strong password policy. Weak passwords are still one of the easiest ways in.
🔐 Turn on MFA. It's the layer that still protects you even if a password leaks.
🎭 Give AWS services roles, not user credentials. An EC2 instance should assume a role, not carry someone's login.
🧾 Use access keys for CLI/SDK access — and treat them exactly like a password: private, and never shared.
📊 Audit regularly. Use the Credentials Report to catch weak or dormant accounts, and Access Advisor to catch unused permissions.
🚨 Never share credentials — full stop. Not users, not passwords, not access keys. This is the one rule that matters most.