ECCouncil Certified Cloud Security Engineer (CCSE) 312-40 Question # 4 Topic 1 Discussion

AWS IAM Roles: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles allow for permissions to be assigned to AWS resources without the use of static credentials. Roles provide temporary credentials that are automatically rotated.

Service Role: The ‘get-pics’ service role created by Rebecca includes a permission policy for read-only access to the S3 bucket and a trust policy that allows the EC2 instance to assume the role.

Temporary Credentials: When the application runs on the EC2 instance, it uses the temporary credentials provided by the role to access the S3 bucket. These credentials are dynamically provided and do not require developer management.

Developer and Admin Roles: Since the EC2 instance has the necessary permissions through the service role, the developer does not need to manage credentials. Similarly, the admin does not need to grant explicit permission to the developer because the permissions are already encapsulated within the role.

Security Best Practices: This approach adheres to AWS security best practices by avoiding the sharing of static credentials and minimizing the need for manual credential management.

References:

AWS’s official documentation on IAM roles.