Google Cloud Platform for Developers

How IAM works

Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a platform-wide access control system that provides granular control over all GCP resources. As it's commonly phrased, IAM specifies WHO can do WHAT to WHICH THING.

• WHO: IAM is composed as a list of policies that apply to one or more actors. Actors are any entity that can take action against a Google Cloud resource. This includes both users and service accounts. Cloud IAM supports policies that apply to groups of actors, and groups can exist at the project level, or the organizational level to span multiple projects.
• WHAT: In general, policies apply to specific actions an actor can take, creating the concept of permissions. For example, the ability to control the types of actions ...