🧪 Lab 4: Cloud Security & IAM (AWS)

Course: CompTIA Cloud+ CV0-004
Objective: Understand identity and access management (IAM), least privilege, and create secure access control policies in AWS.

🎯 Goals

Create IAM Users and Groups
Attach Policies (Least Privilege)
Use MFA and Secure Login Practices
Test Role-based Access via Console and CLI

🔐 Part 1: Create IAM Group and Policy

Go to IAM → User Groups → Create Group
Group name: CloudPlusAdmins
Attach policy:
Click Add permissions
Select AdministratorAccess (for demo) or create custom policy with limited access

✅ Checkpoint: Group created with proper permissions.

👤 Part 2: Create IAM User

Go to Users → Add users
Username: student1
Access Type: Password + Programmatic Access
Assign user to group: CloudPlusAdmins
Set custom password and require password reset on first login

✅ Checkpoint: User created with password and CLI access.

🧪 Part 3: Enable MFA for IAM User

Log in as student1
Go to My Security Credentials
Click Activate MFA → Choose virtual MFA device (e.g., Google Authenticator)
Scan QR code and verify tokens

✅ Checkpoint: MFA is now enabled for user login.

🔧 Part 4: Test Permissions via CLI

Configure CLI:

aws configure
# Provide Access Key ID, Secret, region, format

Test permissions:

aws s3 ls

Try to create a restricted resource (if custom policy was used) and verify denied actions