IAM Role
An identity with permissions that can be temporarily assumed by users, services, or applications.
An IAM role is an AWS identity carrying permissions policies but not tied to a specific user or group. Instead, it is assumed temporarily by trusted entities — an EC2 instance, a Lambda function, an AWS service, or a user from another account — and issues short-lived Security Token Service (STS) credentials that expire automatically. The key exam distinction: roles replace static, long-lived access keys for service-to-service calls. Users have permanent credentials; roles issue temporary ones through STS. When an EC2 instance must call S3 or DynamoDB without storing credentials in code, use an instance profile backed by an IAM role.
PlayPrepHQ study notes are written and reviewed against primary exam sources. How we create & review content →