Creating an IAM User on AWS

You finally launched a cloud account on AWS with access to dozens of services they offer as the root user with the registered email address and password you signed up with. Do not share this credential with employees nor even use same for everyday operations. You must create different users with different permissions and privileges.

In this technical article we will create an administrative user with permissions to managed AWS services. Log onto https://aws.amazon.com and sign-in with the earlier created root user account.

Click on “My Account” and choose the “AWS Management Console” from the drop down menu. When logged in, type “iam” in the search bar and select the suggested result.

Click on “Customize” to assign a unique signin name — best to use your organisation name. The link should now include your organisation’s unique name. Click the “Users” button on the left hand pane.

Then on the succeeding page, click the “Add user” button. And Enter the desired username.

Check the “Programatic access” and “AWS Management Console access” boxes. Select the “Custom password”, then type in your desired password and uncheck the “Require password reset”. Now hit the “Next:Permissions” as the above screenshot.

Select the “Attach existing policies directly” and check the “AdministratorAccess” row as shown in the image above. Click review and ensure the details are as desired and hit the “create user” button on the preceeding page.

Please download the file on the final page and store securely, as this is a one-off action and you cannot do so afterwards. The downloaded credentials would be your access to AWS services.

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