Jul 1, 2026 🌱 Sprout

AWS IAM Identity Center

Notes on the AWS IAM Identity Center

General

The main goal of the IAM Identity Center is to provide centralized control on user access and permissions. Users can then be managed across AWS accounts and cloud applications as needed in one location. Some of the main features of AWS IAM Identity Center are:

  • Centralized user management
  • Consistent access controls
  • Scalable identity management
  • Enhanced security and compliance
  • Streamlined onboarding and offboarding
  • MFA support

One incentive to utilize this service is that AWS IAM Identity Center is offered at no extra charge, regardless how many users are setup.

Use cases

  • Centralized access management
  • Single sign-on
  • Workforce identity management
  • Fine-grained permissions
  • Compliance and auditing

Users

Users are created as you would expect: identity information and email address. There are also user groups that can be used to organize users.

Permission set

Permission sets are created inside of the AWS IAM Identity Center. Then each user gets assigned to the needed / appropriate permission set(s). When users log into the AWS IAM Identity Center, they selet their assigned permission set. And then the user gets credentials for IAM roles in their assigned AWS account.

A single set of credentials can be used to access mutliple AWS accounts and applications. To utilize the permission features, the Identity Center must be integrated with AWS Organizations. I also supports integration with third-party applications and cloud services through the user of SAML 2.0, which extends its features beyond AWS.

When using it with the AWS CLI, you can eliminate the need for long-term access keys and instead utilize short-lived credentials. Permission sets can be setup with predefined templates or customized to your needs. After creation, you can see the policies that are used with the permission set. You then need to add the permission sets and the user group to the AWS account in order for it to be correctly provisioned.

AWS Resources

https://aws.amazon.com/iam/identity-center/ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/singlesignon/latest/userguide/what-is.html https://aws.amazon.com/iam/identity-center/resources/