- Okay, so now that we've created our users and groups,
let's take a look at creating access keys for that user.
So, again, we've created our Jane Doe user.
We've given her a password
so that she can log in to the console,
but perhaps Jane wants to use the Amazon Command Line tools,
or she wants to use the SDK to develop locally.
In those cases, she needs access keys
as a way to authenticate against the AWS API.
So, the password is to log in to the console,
but in order to use the CLI or the SDK
she needs access keys.
And again, as we've talked about,
this kind of authentication and authorization
is specifically for the AWS API.
It is not for operating system
or application level authentication.
So, here I'm on the details of the Jane Doe user,
so I'm gonna make sure that I'm
on the Security Credentials tab.
And you can see that she does not have any access keys yet.
So, I'm gonna create the access key.
Now, at this point, this is the only time
that I will be able to see these access keys.
If I don't copy and paste them from here,
I will never be able to see them again.
I would have to delete them and recreate them.
So, I wanna be sure to copy and paste these.
I'm gonna copy these.
Now generally, if I'm doing this for a user
I wanna be sure to transmit these in a secure way,
over some kind of encrypted connection.
I could copy and paste, I could also download these
as a text file and then transmit that text file to Jane,
again in some kind of secure way.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and copy those, close that,
and you can see now that Jane has an access key.
Now, I can see the key, but I can't see the secret.
There's two parts to it.
There's a public part, and then what we might consider
a private part, the secret part that I can't see.
Now, the best approach might be to enable our users
to create their own access keys
so that they don't have to be transmitted
between an admin and the user.
They can just get them directly,
and that ensures that the keys are kept much more secure.
So, again, that's how we create access keys for our users.
This will be implemented
within the local Amazon Command Line tools
or the SDK for local development.