Definition: The centralized security control plane that manages authentication and authorization across all AWS cloud resources. It serves as the native AWS equivalent of Kubernetes RBAC.

Problem Solved: Secures access to infrastructure resources using centralized, auditable, fine-grained, and temporary security credentials instead of distributed, static passwords and access keys.

Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance

Core Rule (Implicit Default Deny): All API requests across AWS are strictly denied by default unless explicitly granted by a matching Allow statement.

1. IAM Users (Human Identities & Static Credentials)