Create AWS IAM User for S3 Bucket

In this short tutorial, we are going to create an IAM user for our AWS account. IAM users are interacted with the AWS resources, so one AWS account can have multiple IAM users. We can assign customized permissions to IAM users. In this article our main focus is to create an IAM user for S3 bucket.

Create IAM User

First we need to login to AWS Management console as a root user. If you don’t have an AWS account, you can create one year free tier account from here.

• Search IAM in search bar and select it under search results.

In AWS console search, search as IAM and select it. Next you will be redirected to the IAM dashboard.

Select IAM from search results

• Select users from left side panel

In the IAM dashboard, select users from the left side panel and you will be redirected to users dashboard.

Select users

• Now click on add users button on top right corner and you will be redirected to create user window.

Users dashboard

• Type a username in create user window and click the next button.

Create user window

• Now it’s time to set permissions to our IAM user.

Set permissions window

• Next, Expand the permission boundary section and select the relevant fields as in the image below. Click next once you are done with the permissions.

Set S3 full access permissions

• In this page you can review the user details. Once reviewed, click on the create user button, then new user will be created.

User review page

• Now you will be redirected to the users dashboard and you will see available IAM users.

Users dashboard

Generate Access Keys

Now we have created our IAM user successfully. Next we need a way to authenticate our IAM user. To achieve that, next we want to create access keys for the IAM user. Access keys are long term credentials for IAM users. Let’s generate access keys for our IAM user.

• Click on the newly created user, in the newly opened window click on the Security credentials tab.

User view

• Next, Click on Create access key button in Access key section.

Create access key

• Select Application running outside AWS and click next button.

Type of service

• Next, set tag description and click on create access key button.

Tag description

• Finally, access key creation is done and you can download them by clicking the Download .csv file button.

Access keys successfully generated

In this short tutorial we created an AWS IAM user and set the permissions to it. Finally we generated access keys for that user.