Federated and Mobile Access

This is the final chapter focusing on access security. So far, we have discussed access control from within your own AWS account, and even from a cross-account perspective. But what if you have hundreds or even thousands of users who need to access your resources? Configuring and setting up IAM users for so many people is not feasible, or even possible (due to user limitations within IAM). So what options do you have to simplify user management for your employees within a large organization? Also, how can you grant access to tens of thousands or even millions of users who are all competing for that high score on your latest viral mobile gaming app to store their accomplishments in one of your AWS databases? This chapter will help you answer all these questions.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• What is AWS federated access?
• Using SAML federation
• Using social federation