Identity and access management using Boto and JSON

Abstract

Cloud computing has emerged as the important data processing tool as it tackles exponential data growth. This, in turn, makes security something of a moving target. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has declared the Identity and Access Management (IAM) as one of the major threats to the cloud computing. The Top Threats Working Group of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) ranks “IAM” as the second topmost threat among twelve biggest threats in cloud computing. IAM allows the cloud server for managing the web services and herby allowing the users to manage the users and corresponding permissions (user policies). Other benefits posed by the IAM are central management ofusers, and maintain several security qualifications. This paper focuses on Managing IAM Users, and Working with IAM Policies using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and Boto. The paper concludes utmost care should be given to IAM user management and IAM user policies. It is the IAM Policies which play the sole role of ensuring security. If you don’t set up IAM policies properly, you will create security holes leading to security lapses.