AWS IAM: The Cloud Engineer's Security Handbook

About this course

Updated in May 2025. This course now features Coursera Coach! A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. In today's cloud-centric world, securing your AWS environment is more critical than ever. This course is your complete guide to mastering AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), the cornerstone of AWS security. Designed for cloud engineers and security professionals, the course begins by introducing the fundamentals of AWS IAM, including the critical role it plays in managing identities and access controls in the cloud. You'll learn about the various components of IAM, such as users, groups, and roles, and how they work together to secure your AWS resources. As you progress, the course delves deeper into access management, teaching you how to deploy AWS resources securely and control access using policies and roles. You'll gain hands-on experience by creating custom IAM policies, enabling and disabling keys, and accessing resources via the command line interface (CLI). Each module is designed to build on your knowledge, ensuring that you not only understand the concepts but can also apply them in real-world scenarios. The final sections of the course focus on advanced security techniques, such as setting up multi-factor authentication (MFA), managing encryption keys, and implementing best practices for IAM. By the end of the course, you'll have the skills and confidence to secure your AWS environments effectively, ensuring your cloud infrastructure is protected against potential threats. This course is essential for anyone looking to strengthen their cloud security expertise and manage AWS resources with precision. This course is perfect for cloud engineers, security professionals, and IT administrators who are responsible for securing AWS environments. A basic understanding of AWS is recommended, but not required, as the course covers both foundational and advanced concepts.

Course objectives

• master AWS Identity and Access Management
• apply security best practices for managing AWS resources