Definitions

Definition 1 AWS

In AWS, a Principal is any identity belonging to one of the following classes of AWS objects:

• Anonymous User

• Assumed-role Session

• AWS Account

• AWS Account Root User

• AWS Service

• Federated User (using web identity or SAML federation)

• IAM Users

• IAM Role

Principals have the following key characteristics:

• They may be trusted to assume IAM Roles

• They may be granted or denied access permissions via AWS Policies

• Their unique identifier is the AWS ARN

Related Terms

• ARN

• AWS

• AWS Account

• AWS Account Root User (Dictionary Entry)

• AWS IAM

• AWS IAM Group (Dictionary Entry)

• AWS IAM Policy (Dictionary Entry)

Quotes

Principal

A principal is a person or application that can make a request for an action or operation on an AWS resource. The principal is authenticated as the AWS account root user or an IAM entity to make requests to AWS. As a best practice, do not use your root user credentials for your daily work. Instead, create IAM entities (users and roles). You can also support federated users or programmatic access to allow an application to access your AWS account.

Bibliography

• AWS, 11/2020

See Also