IAM Interview Question and Answers [ TOP & MOST ASKED ]

Last updated on 10th Nov 2021, Blog, Interview Questions

IAM stands for Identity and Access Management (IAM) enables users to access the right type of technology, be it networks, databases, or applications. All of it is done at the right time. However, when it comes to hiring an employee to handle this technological aspect, how can aspirants put their best foot forward? An array of organizations and companies come up with plenty of jobs in IAM, including third-party service providers, medium and small-sized businesses, and enterprises.?

1.What is the importance of IAM?

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With an increase in security threats and user privacy preferences turning more difficult to handle, IAM has started to play a crucial role for organizations, irrespective of the industry and size. IAM is vital at a time when passwords get hacked within seconds, data breaches turn a frequent occurrence and intruders infiltrate government as well as organizational agencies.

2.What is an identity directory service?

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Most of the IAM projects comprise working with active directory and other kinds of repositories that are compliant with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Accordingly, LDAP skills are required throughout the project for directory consolidation, QA testing, data conversions, and other tasks.

3.Do you prefer working alone or in a team?

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Communication and collaboration skills are essential. I prefer working in a team as being a team player is vital, whether you have just started or are an IAM professional.

4.What is the method of getting the IP address of a computer?

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To get the IP address, first, go to Start > cmd—systeminfo. The other way is to go to Start > Powershell—systeminfo.

5.What is the method of providing access to a user into a server with Active Directory? And, how would you disable somebody in an Active Directory?

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To give access to a user, first, browse the server in the Active Directory and look for the relevant Access groups in the Server properties. After that, add the user to the preferred group that offers access to the specific service. On the contrary, to disable somebody, look for the user in the Organizational Unit (OU) and right-click, choose Disable Account.

6.Can you define cryptography?

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Basically, cryptography can be defined as the study of secured and safeguarded communication techniques that let the sender and recipient see the contents. The concept is taken from a set of calculations based on rules, known as algorithms, and mathematical concepts. This helps convert plaintext into ciphertext and then again into plaintext. The entire process is known as decryption.

7.What is the objective of cryptography?

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Cryptography keeps information concealed and confidential. In case storage or transmission medium is compromised, encrypted information will render useless to unauthorized people without any key for decryption. And then, with the help of message digests and hashing algorithms, cryptography makes sure the information is accurate. Additionally, digital certificates, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and digital signatures can be used for the purpose of validation.

8.What can you tell us about yourself?

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Whether you are a fresher or an experienced IAM professional, you will have to give a concise, on-point answer to this question. You would have to open up in such a way that the interviewer gets to learn more about your experience and skills so as to figure out whether you are a good match for the organization or not.

9.What kind of users have you worked with before?

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This specific question is for professionals in the IAM field. Basically, the users you would deal with vary on the basis of the job and the company, from privileged and customer accounts to service accounts, business partners, internal employees, and much more.

10.What are the IAM solutions and tools you prefer working with the most?

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Accordingly, IAM could be either a single product or a combination of hardware, cloud services, software, and processes that offer administrators visibility and regulation over the organization’s data. So, if you have worked with any IAM tools and solutions before, mention them in detail.

11.What is the biggest mistake you have committed or the biggest challenge you faced?

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You may also get a variation of this specific question, which could be “What is the hardest part of the job?” It is essential to discuss issues, obstacles and how you deal with them, what you learned throughout the way and what you may do differently in the future.

12.If I was a child, how will you explain the vitality of controlling system access?

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A majority of roles need you to explain technical aspects to those who don’t have a substantial-tech background. Likewise, the interviewer may ask you a question that would assess your abilities and skills to explain.

13.If I was not a tech person, how would you explain the importance of controlling system access?

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Often, employers may also ask a question that would evaluate your interpersonal skill.

14.Tell us about a project you were a part of.

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If you are new to IAM, some of the employers will be interested in practical experience. Thus, before an interview, you must create a list of all the projects you have completed so far.

15.Which users have you worked with? Have you managed customer identity in addition to employee and other internal staff identities?

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The users IAM professionals deal with vary depending on the company and the job, from customers and privileged accounts to service accounts, internal employees, business partners and more.

16.What is your experience with identity directory services such as Active Directory?

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Most IAM projects involve working with Active Directory or other types of repositories that comply with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). According to a blog posting by Avatier, LDAP skills are needed throughout an IAM project for data conversions, QA testing, directory consolidation and other tasks. “Being able to write scripts that push and pull data between databases and the target LDAP directory provides a great deal of power that can be leveraged to accelerate project work,” the Avatier blog states.

17.What is your experience with IAM in the cloud?

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The cloud platform that a company uses would likely be included in the job description, IDPro’s Peterman explained. Among entry-level professionals and career changers, “employers are looking for some exposure to the cloud,” he noted. “If you have experience using one type of cloud, you can probably learn another,”

18.What are your favorite IAM tools and solutions?

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According to web infrastructure and security company Cloudflare, IAM may be a single product or a mix of processes, software, cloud services and hardware that give administrators visibility and control over the organizational data that individual users can access.

19.What is cryptography?

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Kaspersky Lab defines cryptography as “the study of secure communications techniques that allow only the sender and intended recipient of a message to view its contents.” Cryptography refers to secure information and communication techniques derived from mathematical concepts and a set of rule-based calculations called algorithms, to convert plaintext into ciphertext (a process called encryption), then back again (known as decryption).

20.What is the goal of cryptography?

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Cryptography helps keep information confidential; if a transmission or storage medium has been compromised, any encrypted information is practically useless to unauthorized persons without the keys for decryption. Second, by using hashing algorithms and message digests, cryptography helps ensure the integrity (or accuracy) of information. In addition, through digital signatures, digital certificates or a public key infrastructure (PKI), cryptography can be used for authentication (and non-repudiation) services.

21.Why is cryptography important?

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Cryptography can prevent hackers from stealing data. Data needs to be secured because the leaking of sensitive information can put businesses, government institutions, financial institutions and individuals at risk.

22.What is the most interesting/rewarding project or initiative in which you’ve been involved?

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This question gives interviewees a chance to discuss projects that used skills useful to the position for which they are applying. Interviewees might discuss what made the project interesting to them, how they worked with others, and what they learned. More experienced candidates might talk about the project’s management and technical complexities. New graduates can discuss key elements of projects they worked on at universities, training programs and internships.

23.Are you a team player? Discuss how you have engaged with other departments, such as legal and compliance. How do you manage the internal relationships?

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Collaboration and communication skills are crucial. Being a team player is important whether you’re a recent grad, a career-changer or a seasoned IAM professional. Even those in the early stages of building their resumes should be able to address this question. “Many new graduates come from [IT-related programs] that generally have team-based projects,” said Darren Yamaki, director of identity and access management at the University of Southern California.

24.What role have you played in ensuring compliance with government relations?

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Compliance is important because U.S., worldwide and industry-specific data security and privacy laws contain specific IAM mandates. For example, HIPAA’s Security and Privacy Rules define access control measures for health information. Depending on their business, organizations might have to comply with regulations such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, GDPR, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, PCI DSS and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

25.How are changes in technology, from AI to IoT, affecting your job?

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More senior employees might be asked about how AI, automation and the internet of things are changing the way they work and what IAM challenges these technologies are posing, USC’s Yamaki suggested. He added that new graduates might be asked how they stay on top of developments in the field — for example, what journals or websites do they read.

26.How do you get a computer’s IP address?

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An interviewee at WellCare answered the question about obtaining a computer’s IP address. One answer that Glassdoor provided: “Go to Start–cmd –systeminfo or Start–Powershell–systeminfo”.

27.How do you give a user access to a server using Active Directory? How do you disable a user in Active Directory?

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WellCare posed these two questions to IAM interviewees, according to Glassdoor. To grant a user access, browse the server in Active Directory and find out associated Access groups in the Server properties. Then add the user to the desired group, which grants access to that server, according to Microsoft’s documentation website. To disable a user in Active Directory, find the user in the correct organizational unit (OU) and then right click and select “Disable Account”; the user account will now be disabled and you will see a down pointing arrow next to the account name, according to Netwrix Blog.

28.Describe your experience in identity and access management.

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Employers will usually begin interviews by simply asking you to provide a concise overview of your career experience. Your interviewer usually asks such a question out of genuine curiosity, but keep in mind that this question is also used to look for signs of dishonestly in your resume. Employers would want to know if your experience matches the IAM job requirements; assessing risks, managing a program, developing or implementing a system, project management, etc.

29.What resources did you use to train for your role?

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The best employees take the initiative to learn on their own. Employers will want to know about online courses that you have taken and other training that you have done on your own. Pursuing professional IAM certifications from Identity Management Institute is a great way to demonstrate your commitment to the IAM industry and career.

30.If I was not a tech person, how would you explain the importance of controlling system access?

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Most roles require a person who can explain technical matters to people who do not have a strong tech background. Consequently, you can expect an employer to ask a question that attempts to gauge your ability to explain the bottom line. Employers also often ask this question to assess your interpersonal skills since even your team members might not always understand the specifics of your tasks.

31.How do you manage difficult deadlines?

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Deadlines are crucial in IAM. If you are applying for a management position, employers will want to assess how effectively you can manage challenging deadlines.

32.What words have your coworkers used to describe you?

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People who care about other people in the workplace are usually sensitive to how their former coworkers have described them. If you are immediately able to articulate what your coworkers think about you, the odds of you being an effective team player are much higher.

33.What actions do you take on a regular basis to keep your skills current?

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When employers directly ask what you do to stay abreast of technological advancement, they are usually a company that is rapidly adapting to change. As a result, you should try to position yourself as an innovator for the remainder of the interview if you are asked this question.

34.Describe when you would use AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

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This is one of the most difficult identity management job interview questions. If you are knowledgeable in cloud platforms, you should be able to clearly articulate cases when each major provider’s services are appropriate. Smart employers, therefore, will usually try to immediately put you on the spot to test the depth of your knowledge. Although this question is difficult, the good news is that it can be easily prepared for by conducting a bit of preliminary research.

35.Explain what differentiates Amazon EC2 from Amazon S3.

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Employers who are interested in working with a particular cloud provider’s services will often dig deeper to assess the strength of your knowledge in working with a particular platform. Amazon’s services have the highest market share, so you should make sure that you are completely familiar with its services before walking into your interview. However, you can prepare for similar questions by simply studying and experimenting with each of the services of the main cloud providers.

36.What is IAM service in AWS Cloud?

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IAM is abbreviation of Identity Access Management. It’s a service offered by AWS Cloud that helps one to create user account and groups and manage their access to AWS services and resources securely. IAM is a global service and has no additional fees associated to it.

37.Explain different types of user accounts in AWS Cloud?

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Root User is the Owner Account (administrator) and is created with the creation of AWS Account. It has full access by default to all services and resources in the AWS account. This user cannot be explicitly denied access to AWS resources or services with IAM Policies. In order to limit permissions to this user account, one has to do so with AWS Organization Service Control Policy (SCP). Some specific tasks such as closing an AWS Account can only be accomplished by the AWS Account Root User only.

IAM User is a standard user account that has no permission to any AWS service or resource. This account is either created by root user or an IAM administrator. IAM Policies are used to define permissions to this user account. All the user, that require to login in AWS Management Console, or configure services or access resources programmatically, can have their individual IAM user account with different set of policies associated to them. Certain tasks such as closing an AWS Account cannot be accomplished by this user account.

38.Describe the key elements used in the JSON schema of an IAM policy?

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Following are some of the key elements used in describing a IAM Policy in JSONJSON:-

• Version
• Statement
• Sid
• Effect
• Action
• Resource

39.What is Identity based policy in AWS IAM?

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Identity based policy are the most frequently used JSON permissions policy document. It’s used to control actions of an identity (Individual user, group of users or a role) can perform on an AWS Resource under certain circumstance.

40.What are the types of Identity based policy in AWS IAM?

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There are 2 types of Identity based policies, they are Managed or Inline policies:-

• Managed Policy: It’s simply a policy that you can apply on an individual IAM user, group of users or role in AWS account.
• Inline Policy: These policies are dedicated to a specific identity i.e. user, group or role. These policies are deleted as the identity associated is deleted. These policies maintain a strict, one-to-one relationship with the associated identity and can’t be associated to different identity.

41.What is MFA support for IAM?

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MFA stands for Multi-Factor Authentication. IAM MFA provides an additional layer of security by prompting a user for username and password (the first factor, intellectual information) and additionally requiring the user to also enter the code generated (the second factor, randomly generated token valid for a single login session) by the MFA device associated with the user account for entering the AWS management console. To setup MFA for an account, one simply needs to buy a hardware device or simply install a free virtual MFA app on his mobile, other than this no extra cost is associated.

42.How IAM works.

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43.Explain what T2 instances is?

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T2 instances are designed to provide moderate baseline performance and the capability to burst to higher performance as required by the workload.

44. What is Amazon EMR?

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EMR is a survived cluster stage which helps you to interpret the working of data structures before the intimation. Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark on the Amazon Web Services help you to investigate a large amount of data. You can prepare data for the analytics goals and marketing intellect workloads using Apache Hive and using other relevant open-source designs.

45.What’s AWS IAM?

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The IAM’s full form is Identity and access management.

46.Are root users and IAM users the same?

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No, the root user is also called the master user. The IAM user is subset of the root user.

47.In the IAM service, can we monitor the IAM user activity?

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Yes, you can monitor the actives of IAM users. If any violation, you can remove access for the IAM user.

48.How authentication is controlled in the IAM service?

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• You can mange the users. You can control access keys, passwords, multifactor authentication.
• Manages federated users.

49.What is federated user access management?

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A user who is allowed to access AWS resources from third-party vendors – such as Google, Facebook, Linked In, Corporate credentials, etc.

50.What is Authorization in terms of AWS IAM service?

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It’s to provide authorization for certain AWS resources – not all.The best example is providing read-only access to the ‘S3’ service.

51.How to control Authorization in AWS IAM?

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You can control authorization by creating policies.

52.How AWS IAM allows access?

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53.What’s the other name of the IAM user?

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You can also be called an IAM entity.

54.What is CloudTrail in AWS?

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It’s a service, which records the logs of each IAM entity. So that you can use these logs for auditing and compliance purposes.

55.What are the 5 top security credentials in AWS IAM?

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• User-id and Password.
• E-mail address and Password.
• Access Keyes.
• Key pair.
• Multi-factor authentication.

56.What are Temporary Security Credentials?

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These are short-lived security credentials. These you can create from AWSSTS service (AWS security Token Service).

57.What are AWS IAM roles?

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• User – Specific IAM entity.
• Group – These people will have the same kind of Access.

58.What are the top AWS IAM Roles?

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In AWS IAM there are two types of roles. The IAM user will have a permanent identity. The federated user (Question# 5) will not have an identity.

59.What is the IAM Hierarchy of Privileges?

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• Root user.
• IAM user.
• user with temporary credentials.

60.What are the key capabilities provided by AWS IAM?

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AWS Identity And Access Management (IAM) provides the following key capabilities:

• Access control to AWS resources – IAM enables fine-grained access control to AWS resources and APIs. IAM enables access control by specific conditions like – by time of day, by originating IP address, by SSL, by MFA etc.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) – IAM provides the capability for MFA, which augments the basic authentication with MFA token/device based authentication.

61.What is AWS account root user?

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Root user is the user id (email id) and password used to first create the AWS account. Root user has complete access to all the AWS services and resources in the account. After creating the AWS account, it is recommended to create a separate admin user to manage admin and everyday tasks, instead of using the root user.

62.What are AWS policies?

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Policies are objects in AWS that are associated with an entity (users, groups, roles) or AWS resources to define their permissions. Policies are stored in AWS as JSON objects. AWS supports six types of policies: identity-based policies, resource-based policies, permissions boundaries, Organizations SCPs, ACLs, and session policies.

63.How can you send a request to Amazon S3?

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Amazon S3 is a REST service, and you can send a request by using the REST API or the AWS SDK wrapper libraries that wrap the underlying Amazon S3 REST API.

64.How to create an AWS IAM policy?

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65.In VPC with private and public subnets, database servers should ideally be launched into which subnet?

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With private and public subnets in VPC, database servers should ideally launch into private subnets.

66.Explain how the buffer is used in Amazon web services?

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The buffer is used to make the system more robust to manage traffic or load by synchronizing different components. Usually, components receive and process the requests in an unbalanced way. With the help of a buffer, the components will be balanced and will work at the same speed to provide faster services.

67.What are key-pairs in AWS?

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Key-pairs are secure login information for your virtual machines. To connect to the instances, you can use key-pairs which contain a public-key and private-key.

68.Is the property of broadcast or multicast supported by Amazon VPC?

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No, currently Amazon VPI does not provide support for broadcast or multicast.

69.How many Elastic IPs are allowed to be created by AWS?

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5 VPC Elastic IP addresses are allowed for each AWS account.

70.Explain default storage class in S3.

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The default storage class is a Standard frequently accessed.

71.What are the Roles?

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Roles are used to provide permissions to entities which you can trust within your AWS account. Roles are very similar to users. However, with roles, you do not require to create any username and password to work with the resources.

72.What are the edge locations?

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Edge location is the area where the contents will be cached. So, when a user is trying to access any content, the content will automatically be searched in the edge location.

73.What is VPC?

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VPC stands for Virtual Private Cloud. It allows you to customize your networking configuration. It is a network which is logically isolated from another network in the cloud. It allows you to have your IP address range, internet gateways, subnet, and security groups.

74.Explain snowball.

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Snowball is a data transport option. It used source appliances to a large amount of data into and out of AWS. With the help of snowball, you can transfer a massive amount of data from one place to another. It helps you to reduce networking costs.

75.What is a redshift?

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Redshift is a big data warehouse product. It is a fast and powerful, fully managed data warehouse service in the cloud.

76.What is meant by subnet?

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A large section of IP Addresses divided into chunks is known as subnets.

77.Can you establish a Peering connection to a VPC in a different region?

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Yes, we can establish a peering connection to a VPC in a different region. It is called inter-region VPC peering connection.

78.What is SQS?

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Simple Queue Service is also known as SQS. It is distributed queuing service which acts as a mediator for two controllers.

79.How many subnets can you have per VPC?

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You can have 200 subnets per VPC.

80.DNS and Load Balancer service comes under which type of cloud service?

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DNS and Load Balancer and DNS services come under IAAS-storage cloud service.

81.What is the role of AWS CloudTrail?

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CloudTrail is a specially designed tool for logging and tracking API calls. It helps to audit all S3 bucket accesses.

82.When was EC2 officially launched?

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EC2 officially launched in the year 2006.

83.What is SimpleDB?

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SimpleDB is a data repository of structure record which encourages data doubts and indexing both S3 and EC2are called SimpleDB.

84.Explain Amazon ElasticCache.

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Amazon Elasticcache is a web service which makes it easy to deploy, scale and store data in the cloud.

85.What is AWS Lambda?

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Lambda is an Amazon compute service which allows you to run code in the AWS Cloud without managing servers.

86.Name the types of AMI provided by AWS.

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The types of AMI provided by AWS are:-

• Instance store backed.
• EBS backed.

87.Name the AWS service that exists only to redundantly cache data and images?

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AWS Edge locations are services that redundantly cache data and images.

88.Explain Geo Restriction in CloudFront.

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A Geo-restriction feature helps you to prevent users of specific geographic locations from accessing content which you’re distributing through a CloudFront web distribution.

89.How to configure IAM role for fargate tasks on AWS.

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90.What is the boot time taken for the instance stored backed AMI?

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The boot time for an Amazon instance store-backend AMI is less than 5 minutes.

91.Do you need an internet gateway to use peering connections?

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Yes, the Internet gateway is needed to use VPC (virtual private cloud peering) connections.

92.How to connect EBS volume to multiple instances?

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We can’t be able to connect EBS volume to multiple instances. However, you can connect various EBS Volumes to a single instance.

93.List different types of cloud services.

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Various types of cloud services are:-

• Software as a Service (SaaS).
• Data as a Service (DaaS).
• Platform as a Service (PaaS).
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

94.State the difference between An Instance and AMI.

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AMI is a template consisting of software configuration part. For example Operating systems, applications, application servers if you start an instance, a duplicate of the AMI in a row as an attendant in the cloud.

95.What are the different types of Load Balancers in AWS services?

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Two types of Load balancers are:-

• Application Load Balancer.
• Classic Load Balancer.

96.In which situation you will select provisioned IOPS over Standard RDS storage?

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You should select provisioned IOPS storage over standard RDS storage if you want to perform batch-related workloads.

97.What are the important features of Amazon cloud search?

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Important features of the Amazon cloud are:-

• Boolean searches.
• Prefix Searches.
• Range searches.
• Entire text search.
• AutoComplete advice.

98.Can vertically scaling is allowed in Amazon Instance?

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Yes, you can vertically estimate one Amazon instance.

99.What is the use of lifecycle hooks in Autoscaling?

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Lifecycle hooks are used for autoscaling to put an additional wait time to a scale in or scale out event.

100.What are the various layers of Cloud Architecture explained in AWS training?

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Different layers of cloud architecture are:-

• Cloud controller.
• Cluster controller.
• Storage Controller.
• Node Controller.