Understand identities, authentication, and authorization
Separate who or what an identity is from how it signs in and what it can access.
- Distinguish identity, authentication, authorization, and accounting.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the set of people, processes, and systems used to manage identities and their access. Identification says which identity is being claimed. Authentication checks evidence for that claim. Authorization decides what the authenticated identity may do. Accounting records relevant activity. IAM covers human users, services, devices, and other principals.
Authentication and authorization solve different problems: a successful sign-in does not imply access to every resource. Make authorization decisions for a specific action and resource, using current policy and context. Logs help answer what happened, but should avoid collecting unnecessary secrets.
Practice: name each step
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Up to 15 XPWhich part of IAM is this?
Each of these happens in an ordinary sign-in. Sort them by the question they answer.
“You type your username.”
“You approve a prompt on your security key.”
“The app checks whether your role may export reports.”
“The server records who exported which report, and when.”
“A service presents its signed token to an API.”
Practice: read an access log
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Up to 15 XPAuthentication failure or authorization failure?
HTTP status codes tell the two apart: 401 means “we don’t know who you are”, and 403 means “we know, and the answer is no”.
Which line shows a known identity being refused?
Key takeaways
Distinguish identity, authentication, authorization, and accounting.
Treat access as a lifecycle: grant deliberately, review regularly, and revoke promptly.
Lesson quiz
5 questions · pass with 4 correct · up to 50 XP
Passing this quiz completes the lesson and keeps your streak going. Questions you miss come back in review sessions later.
Questions about this lesson
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