IAM concepts

Identity and Access Management (IAM) concepts cover the policies, processes, and tools used to manage digital identities and regulate user access to resources. Key IAM principles include authentication, authorization, provisioning, and least privilege. Effective IAM ensures that the right users have the right access at the right time.

Categories:

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)

IAM concepts

IGA is the framework and processes used to ensure that the right individuals and machines have the appropriate access to technology resources. It integrates identity lifecycle management (provisioning, deprovisioning) with governance processes (e.g., auditing, role management, policy enforcement) to ensure compliance, security, and efficiency in managing identities.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM concepts

A framework for managing and controlling access to resources, systems, and data based on the identities of users, machines, or services.

Group Policy

IAM concepts

A feature used in IAM systems, especially in Active Directory environments, to manage and configure the settings of user and machine identities across an organization.

Governance

IAM concepts

In identity and access management, governance refers to the processes and policies used to manage identities, ensure compliance with regulations, and maintain control over user access and privileges. In workload management, it refers to the strategic oversight of system workloads and resources.

Service Provider (SP)

IAM concepts

A system, application, or service that relies on an identity provider for authentication and authorization. Service providers accept identity tokens or assertions from the IdP to grant access to their resources or functionalities.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

IAM concepts

A mechanism that allows users to authenticate once and gain access to multiple systems or services without needing to re-authenticate. SSO enhances user experience and productivity while reducing the burden of managing multiple sets of credentials.

Secretless

IAM concepts

A secretless architecture refers to systems where applications and services authenticate and communicate without the need to manage secrets directly (e.g., passwords, tokens, or API keys). Instead, they rely on dynamically generated, just-in-time mechanisms for identity or access.

Security Token Service (STS)

IAM concepts

STS (such as AWS Security Token Service) is a cloud service that provides temporary, limited-privilege credentials for authenticated users or workloads. These tokens allow access to resources for a specific duration, reducing the need for long-term credentials and improving security.

SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone)

IAM concepts

SPIFFE is an open-source framework for providing secure, cryptographic identities to services and workloads in dynamic, distributed systems like microservices. It defines standards for identity creation, verification, and lifecycle management across different cloud and infrastructure environments.

SPIRE (SPIFFE Runtime Environment)

IAM concepts

SPIRE is the production-grade implementation of the SPIFFE specification. It is a system that manages, issues, and verifies SPIFFE identities across distributed systems, ensuring workloads are properly authenticated within microservices environments.