The IAM engineer path
You decide who can do what, and you make sure nobody quietly accumulates more than they need. Stolen credentials, not clever exploits, start most intrusions — which is why identity is where organizations are actively spending, and why this work is steadier than it sounds.
Published 2026-10-09 · generated from the lesson data · serves IAM engineer
Work the groups in order. Each checkpoint is a gate: do not move on until you can do it unaided. The capstone is level 4 — original work, made public, verifiable by a stranger.
Foundations
HTTP here means the authentication layer: Basic, Bearer, JWT structure, OAuth 2.0 and OIDC flows. Linux here means the permission model — the oldest access-control system you will ever administer.
CISSP Domain 5
Cloud IAM
For the cloud IAM deep dive: policies read as code, roles, federation.
Cryptography
Hashing, signatures, PKI — and what breaks when each is misused.
Checkpoints
- A permissions audit of a lab environment, with a written removal rationale for every grant you would revoke.
- Least privilege applied end to end, with the breakage notes — a fix that breaks the app is not a fix.
- A joiner-mover-leaver process document: what happens on day one, on transfer, on departure.
The capstone
Level 4 — Extend: Published IAM reference others can run. A least-privilege policy library for a common stack, with rationale per policy, or an access-review methodology with a worked example — published, runnable. That is the artifact a hiring stranger checks.