What features are provided by AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)?

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a crucial service that allows you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. One of its standout features is the ability to create and manage various entities that play a vital role in access management.

The correct choice highlights that IAM provides user accounts, roles, groups, and policies. Each of these components serves a distinct purpose. User accounts represent individual users within your AWS environment, granting them unique credentials for accessing AWS resources. Roles are used to delegate access with specific permissions allowing users or services to act on behalf of an entity, thus enabling temporary access without sharing credentials. Groups are collections of user accounts, which facilitate easier permissions management by allowing you to assign permissions at the group level instead of individually. Policies define the permissions for users, roles, or groups, specifying which actions are allowed or denied on which resources.

This comprehensive management of access permissions is essential for maintaining security and ensuring that users have the appropriate level of access necessary for their roles within an organization. This multifaceted approach to identity and access management helps organizations uphold security best practices in the cloud.