Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google Cloud IAM VS AWS Identity and Access Management

Compare Google Cloud IAM VS AWS Identity and Access Management and see what are their differences

Google Cloud IAM logo Google Cloud IAM

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) lets administrators authorize who can take action on specific resources, giving you full control and visibility to manage cloud resources centrally.

AWS Identity and Access Management logo AWS Identity and Access Management

AWS Identity and Access Management enables you to securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users.
  • Google Cloud IAM Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • AWS Identity and Access Management Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-02-02

Google Cloud IAM features and specs

  • Granular Access Control
    Google Cloud IAM allows for precise control over who has access to which resources, enabling administrators to assign roles at a very granular level.
  • Unified Management
    Provides a single view into managing permissions across all Google Cloud Platform resources, simplifying the management of who has access to what.
  • Predefined Roles
    Comes with predefined roles which make it easier to assign permissions without having to define custom roles, reducing the complexity for administrators.
  • Policy Versioning
    Supports IAM policy versioning, which helps in tracking changes and rollback to earlier versions, aiding in better managing access configurations over time.
  • Integration with GCP Services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud Platform services, providing a more streamlined and coherent cloud environment.
  • Automated Recommendations
    Features intelligent access recommendations using Machine Learning to help administrators determine the most appropriate permissions for users and services.
  • Compliance and Security Auditing
    Offers extensive logging and auditing capabilities, essential for ensuring compliance and monitoring for any security breaches or unauthorized accesses.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud IAM

  • Complexity
    The granularity of permissions and the broad array of roles can lead to increased complexity, making it difficult for less experienced administrators to manage effectively.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires substantial learning and familiarity with both Google Cloud services and IAM concepts, which can be daunting for new users.
  • Limited Cross-Platform Support
    While powerful within Google Cloud, IAM’s capabilities and integrations are limited when it comes to non-GCP environments, making it less versatile for multi-cloud strategies.
  • Potential Over-privileging
    Improper configuration or misunderstanding of roles and permissions can lead to over-privileging, where users have more access than necessary, posing security risks.
  • Cost
    Managing IAM effectively often requires dedicated resources and potentially third-party tools, which can add to the overall cost of using Google Cloud Platform.
  • Latency in Permission Changes
    In some cases, there can be latency in the propagation of changes to permissions, which can delay the enforcement of new policies.

AWS Identity and Access Management features and specs

  • Granular Control
    AWS IAM provides highly granular control over permissions, allowing administrators to fine-tune access policies down to individual actions on specific resources.
  • Scalability
    IAM is designed to scale with your AWS usage, accommodating complex organizational structures and a large number of users without performance degradation.
  • Integration with AWS Services
    Seamlessly integrates with all AWS services, enabling unified access management across the entire AWS ecosystem.
  • Security Features
    Includes advanced security features like multi-factor authentication (MFA), roles, and temporary security credentials to enhance the security of AWS accounts.
  • Audit and Compliance
    AWS IAM provides detailed logging and monitoring capabilities through AWS CloudTrail, facilitating compliance with regulatory requirements.
  • Cost-Effective
    IAM is free of charge, with no additional costs beyond the consumption of AWS resources themselves.

Possible disadvantages of AWS Identity and Access Management

  • Complexity
    The extensive capabilities of IAM can lead to complexity, making it challenging for new users to fully understand and configure permissions effectively.
  • Limited User Interface
    The IAM management console UI can be less intuitive, which may slow down the process of setting up and managing access policies.
  • Initial Setup
    Setting up IAM for a large organization with specific security requirements can be time-consuming and requires careful planning.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a steep learning curve for understanding IAM policies, roles, and their correct implementation, which might require specialized training.
  • Documentation Complexity
    While extensive, AWS documentation for IAM can sometimes be overwhelming and complex, making it difficult to find specific information quickly.

Google Cloud IAM videos

Manage Access Control with Google Cloud IAM | Google Cloud Labs

AWS Identity and Access Management videos

AWS re:Inforce 2023 - A first-principles approach: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) (IAM201)

More videos:

  • Review - AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Basics | AWS Training For Beginners

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Cloud IAM and AWS Identity and Access Management)
Identity And Access Management
Identity Provider
58 58%
42% 42
SSO
64 64%
36% 36
Single Sign-On
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google Cloud IAM and AWS Identity and Access Management

Google Cloud IAM Reviews

Top 11 Identity & Access Management Tools
This means that it is fair to pick up Google Cloud as your IAM simply based on those numbers. But what does Google Cloud IAM do differently than Azure and AWS?
Source: spectralops.io

AWS Identity and Access Management Reviews

We have no reviews of AWS Identity and Access Management yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, AWS Identity and Access Management should be more popular than Google Cloud IAM. It has been mentiond 59 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google Cloud IAM mentions (6)

  • IAM Best Practices [cheat sheet included]
    While it is commonly associated with AWS, and their AWS IAM service, IAM is not limited to their platform. All cloud providers, such as Google Cloud and Azure DevOps, offer IAM solutions that allow users to access resources and systems. If you are looking for specific AWS IAM best practices, look no further than our AWS IAM Security Best Practices article:\ For the rest of this article, we will look at the... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Cloud Incident Response
    Cloud Identity and Access Management: This service provides fine-grained control over who has access to what resources within an organization's Google Cloud environment. It can be used to quickly revoke access to compromised accounts or limit access to sensitive resources. Https://cloud.google.com/iam. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Google Cloud Reference
    Cloud IAM: Resource access control 🔗Link 🔗Link. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Five Dex Alternatives for Kubernetes Authentication
    OAuth 2.0 authenticates both service accounts and user accounts in GKE. This authentication protocol uses the OpenID Connect method to verify the identity of Kubernetes clusters. GKE is integrated with Google Cloud IAM, so you can also use IAM to control access to your clusters or to configure a user to control the GKE cluster and Google Cloud resources. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • GCP security best practices
    GCP Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps enforce least privilege access control to your cloud resources. You can use IAM to restrict who is authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
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AWS Identity and Access Management mentions (59)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Cloud IAM and AWS Identity and Access Management, you can also consider the following products

Okta - Enterprise-grade identity management for all your apps, users & devices

Auth0 - Auth0 is a program for people to get authentication and authorization services for their own business use.

Atlassian Crowd - Crowd is a single sign-on and user identity solution.

OneLogin - On-demand SSO, directory integration, user provisioning and more

Ping Identity - Ping Identity provides cloud-based, single sign-on and identity management solutions with their SAML SSO.

Amazon Cognito - Amazon Cognito lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily. It scales to millions of users and supports sign-in with social identity providers and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0.