IAM overview
Kakao Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management) is a service that centrally manages access permissions to cloud resources.
By assigning roles to users or groups and implementing role-based access control (RBAC), IAM enables fine-grained authorization and secure resource operations.
When integrated with Cloud Trail, IAM automatically collects and tracks major events such as console logins, group and project creation, and user invitations based on IAM credentials.
- RBAC (Role-Based Access Control):
A model that defines permissions by role and assigns those roles to users or groups.
Instead of granting permissions directly to each user, permissions are managed indirectly through roles—enhancing both security and administrative efficiency.
Purpose and use cases
Without IAM, issues such as unauthorized access, excessive privilege assignment, or misuse of permissions can occur.
Additionally, user activity is difficult to track in a consistent, centralized manner, making it challenging to detect or monitor security incidents in advance.
Kakao Cloud IAM prevents these risks through role-based authorization, enabling consistent and centralized control over access permissions.
For example, if a user is assigned only the Billing Manager role, they can view invoices and manage payment methods but cannot access any other project resources.
By granting only the minimum permissions required for each task, IAM strengthens security and improves operational efficiency.
IAM also provides advanced features such as group-based permission inheritance, organizational separation, external IdP integration, and event tracking.
It is integrated across most Kakao Cloud services—including Beyond Compute, Networking, Storage, Container Pack, and Billing—and is offered at no additional cost.
Getting started
Kakao Cloud IAM offers documentation for all user levels—from first-time users to administrators managing production environments.
- Understand IAM components:
Learn about the structure and key concepts of IAM—such as organizations, projects, users, groups, and roles—in the Components document. - Manage roles and permissions:
Understand how to assign and apply roles to users and groups at the organization or project level in Roles and permissions. - How-to guides:
Follow step-by-step procedures for console setup, role assignment, external IdP integration, and more in the How-to guides section.
If you are new to Kakao Cloud, start with Getting started with Kakao Cloud, which introduces the overall platform and account setup process.