Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Amazon AWS Dashboard and Setup IAM

This article will walk you through the Amazon AWS dashboard along with setting up  IAM  (Identity Access Management ).  It has legacy and modern dashboards which can be set by users at their convenient. I will be using latest dashboard during this tutorial. Once you have signed in to AWS console , you need to setup IAM to enable more security features to your account. The root account is simply the account created when first setup your AWS account and it has complete Admin access. So its essential to enable security features like MFA (Multi-Factor-Authentication) and configuring additional root users on that account.  IAM consists users, groups , polices documents  and roles. This is similar to users management on any Unix or windows operating system.
Let’s walk you through the virtual LAB.

AWS – Web Console 

1.Login to Amazon AWS console using email account.
sign-in-to-amazon-aws-console
sign-in-to-amazon-aws-console

2. Once you have logged in , setup the near by AWS region for better performance. By default, AWS selects Oregon region and I have set it to “Asia Pacific (Mumbai)” which is near to my location.
select-near-by-region
select-near-by-region

3. Here is the AWS console Home Page. You could only see “solutions” are displaying in home console instead of AWS services when you compare to old console.
amazon-console-home-page
amazon-console-home-page

4. To see all the AWS services, click on “All services” which is below to the search bar. You could also click on “Services” from menu to see the available AWS services.
amazon-aws-all-services-link
amazon-aws-all-services-link

5. Click on “IAM” from “Security & Identity” tab  to enable security features to the root account. The below video will help you understand how IAM works and why it’s so important in AWS .

Setup IAM (Identity Access Management)

Action items: 
  • Customize the direct Console URL.
  • Enhance Account  Security.

Customize the direct Console URL 

1. Here is the “IAM”  Management console for brand new AWS accounts. AWS offers the direct console access to access every account. You can set the preferred URL for your account.  Click on “customize”  to setup new URL for direct console.
iam-console-link-customize
iam-console-link-customize

2. Enter new custom URL part.
new-direct-console-url
New-direct-console-url

3. Here is the new direct console URL for your AWS account.
new-direct-console-url
new-direct-console-url

Enhance Account  Security:

Action items : 
  • Activate MFA on your root account
  • Create individual IAM users
  • Users group to assign permissions
  • Apply an IAM policy

Activate MFA on your root account:


1. Select “Activate MFA on your root account”  tab and Click on Manage MFA .
manage-mfa-aws
manage-mfa-aws

2. Select the MFA type as virtual. Hardware MFA device require physical RSA token or similar to that.
select-virtual-mfa-device-aws
select-virtual-mfa-device-aws

3. Follow the link to see the supported devices for virtual MFA. Click  on Next to step to continue.
manage-mfa-devcies
manage-mfa-devices

4. Here is your QR.
qr-codes-AWS
qr-codes-AWS

5. Here is the supported MFA applications for AWS.
supported-virtual-mfa-applications
supported-virtual-mfa-applications

5. Take your  smart phone and install “Google Authenticator” . If you have Android smart phone, download fro google play.

6. Choose SCAN QR in google authenticator  and scan the QR code which is displaying in your laptop. (Refer Step 4)

7. Enter the Authentication code 1 from Google Authenticator app.
qr-code-and-enter-authentication-code-1-2
qr-code-and-enter-authentication-code-1-2

You must enter code2 which is next available random codes from google authenticator. Once it’s done, Activate Virtual MFA.

8. On Successful activation, You will get message like below.
mfa-device-successfully-setup
mfa-device-successfully-setup

9. Refresh the screen to see the latest security status.
Security Status - IAM - AWS
Security Status – IAM – AWS

We will continue the following actions demonstrations on upcoming articles.
  • Create individual IAM users
  • Users group to assign permissions
  • Apply an IAM policy




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