DevOps Articles

AWS Service Principals: The Complete Auto-Updated List (2025)

The article explores AWS IAM Service Principals, an essential concept for managing permissions in Amazon Web Services. Service principals define which AWS services can assume a role and perform actions on behalf of users or applications. Understanding how to effectively use service principals is crucial for enforcing security and promoting best practices in a cloud environment.

By leveraging service principals, DevOps teams can streamline their workflows, allowing services such as Lambda or EC2 to interact with other AWS services without compromising security. This reduces the risk of over-permissioning, ensuring that services have only the necessary access they need. The article also outlines the difference between service principals and IAM roles, providing clarity on their use cases.

Furthermore, the article provides practical tips for implementing IAM service principals correctly, including auditing existing policies and adopting a principle of least privilege approach. By focusing on these practices, teams can enhance their cloud security posture while simplifying resource management, making them more efficient in their DevOps endeavors.