Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)
Identity and access management (IAM) software
Privileged access management (PAM) software
Identity management software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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What is Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)
Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) is an access control service for Google Cloud that manages who (identity) can do what (permissions) on which resources. It is used by cloud administrators, security teams, and application owners to enforce least-privilege access across projects, folders, organizations, and individual services. The product centers on policy-based authorization using roles and permissions, with tight integration into Google Cloud services and audit logging.
Fine-grained, policy-based access
IAM provides granular permissions through predefined, custom, and primitive roles that can be applied at multiple resource hierarchy levels. Policies support inheritance across organization, folder, and project scopes, which helps standardize access patterns. Conditional access (IAM Conditions) enables attribute-based restrictions such as time, IP range, or resource attributes for supported services.
Deep Google Cloud integration
IAM is natively integrated across Google Cloud services, so access controls are consistently enforced without separate agents. It works with Google identities and external identities via federation, enabling centralized authorization for cloud resources. Audit logs and policy change history integrate with Google Cloud logging services to support investigations and compliance workflows.
Service accounts and delegation
IAM supports service accounts for workload-to-workload authentication and authorization, including key-based and keyless patterns depending on the service. Features such as service account impersonation and short-lived credentials reduce the need to distribute long-lived secrets. This helps teams implement controlled delegation for automation and CI/CD pipelines.
Not a full PAM suite
IAM controls permissions to Google Cloud resources but does not provide full privileged access management capabilities such as privileged session management, keystroke recording, or vaulting for heterogeneous infrastructure. Organizations typically need additional controls for privileged access on operating systems, databases, and non-Google environments. As a result, IAM alone may not satisfy PAM requirements for regulated environments.
Complexity at scale
Large environments can accumulate many roles, bindings, and service accounts, making effective access reviews and policy hygiene challenging. Misconfigurations (for example, overly broad roles or inherited permissions) can be difficult to detect without strong governance processes. Teams often need additional tooling and conventions to keep policies understandable and auditable.
Google Cloud-centric scope
IAM primarily governs access to Google Cloud resources and does not function as a universal IAM layer for all SaaS applications and on-prem systems. While federation and identity integrations exist, authorization decisions for non-Google targets are typically handled by those target systems. Organizations with multi-cloud or broad SaaS estates may require separate identity governance and application access tooling.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) | Free (no additional charge) | Fine-grained access control for Google Cloud resources; IAM API usage is free for all Google Cloud customers. Charges apply only for other Google Cloud services used in conjunction with IAM. See official docs for details. |
Seller details
Google LLC
Mountain View, CA, USA
1998
Subsidiary
https://cloud.google.com/deep-learning-vm
https://x.com/googlecloud
https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/
