Posted by Karan Vaghela | Leader, AWS Student Builder Groups at P P Savani University | Cybersecurity & Cloud The fastest way to get your AWS project hacked is to hardcode your credentials somewhere. An AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID sitting in a .env file that accidentally gets pushed to GitHub is a classic mistake, and it happens to experienced engineers too, not just beginners. When I was setting up Claude on Amazon Bedrock for a project, I made sure the entire flow used IAM roles and profiles — zero hardcoded keys anywhere. This post walks through exactly how to do that, why it matters, and the specific gotchas I ran into along the way. Why IAM Roles Over Access Keys Access keys are long-lived credentials. If they leak, an attacker has persistent access until you manually rotate or revoke them. IAM roles, on the other hand, issue temporary credentials that expire automatically.…