Overview of IAM
In the previous chapter, we discussed Cloud Identity and its role in authentication, user management, and device management in Google Cloud and Google Workspace. Now, let us explore IAM, which focuses on authorization in Google Cloud. Authorization is a key principle of cloud computing, addressing various requirements and ensuring secure access to resources. Some of the problems it solves are the following:
- How do I grant access to people and workloads?
- How do I provide time-bound access?
- How do I create service accounts with the least privilege?
- How do I enable services in a particular project but not others?
- How do I grant just the right access to users?
- How do I operate in multi-cloud environments?
- How do I find over-provisioned access?
- How do I troubleshoot access issues?
Figure 6.1 – IAM overview
In Figure 6.1, you can see how IAM works on the principle of who (identity) has what access...
