User passwords in Amazon - Amazon Identity and Access Management
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

User passwords in Amazon

You can manage passwords for IAM users in your account. IAM users need passwords in order to access the Amazon Web Services Management Console. Users do not need passwords to access Amazon resources programmatically by using the Amazon CLI, Tools for Windows PowerShell, the Amazon SDKs or APIs. For those environments, you have the option of assigning IAM users access keys. However, there are other more secure alternatives to access keys that we recommend you consider first. For more information, see Amazon security credentials.

Note

If one of your IAM users lose or forget their password, you cannot retrieve them from IAM. Depending on your settings, either the user or the administrator must create a new password.

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