Amazon is a vast enterprise that sells products to its online customers. It has become so popularly known term over the years because of its vast and reliable features. There is also a term known as Amazon Web Services that provides cloud services to its customers. Both Amazon and Amazon Web Services require signup and login to use their respective features. But, are AWS and Amazon the same?
The answer is “NO”, AWS and Amazon are two different services and they have their own websites and their own separate accounts. This means that an AWS account cannot be used to access the services of Amazon and vice versa.
What is an Amazon Account?
The website of Amazon provides trading (buying and selling) facilities to individuals and companies. The Amazon website has gained huge recognition worldwide because of its reliability. People from all over the world sign up for an Amazon account and purchase and sell stuff on the website easily. So, the amazon account is the type of account that is required while shopping from Amazon’s trading website.
Moreover, because of the vast features and availability of Amazon all across the world, not only individuals but also large and well-known companies use it to sell their products and gain huge profits. To sign up or sign in to the Amazon account, click here.
Following is the web page interface that appears to let users sign up or sign in to an Amazon account:
What is AWS Account?
On the other hand, the AWS (Amazon Web Service) account provides Amazon cloud services to its users (people who sign up for the AWS account). AWS being a cloud service provider has nothing to do with buying and selling stuff.
There are four major types of services that AWS provides to its users that include compute services (for e.g. EC2 and AWS Lambda), storage services (for e.g. Simple Storage Service), networking services (for e.g. VPN) and database services (for e.g. RDS)
Types of AWS Account
There are majorly two different types of AWS accounts, i.e., “Root user account” and “IAM user account”.
Root User Account: The Root user account of AWS is considered the main account that has access to each and every service of that account. In large organizations, only the owners and managers that handle the whole organization have access to the root user account. Through the root user account, permissions to the users (for example, employees of an organization) are given to use limited services (the services that are relevant to their jobs).
Because the root user account has access and control over all the AWS services, a compromised root user account can cause an irreversible loss to the organization.
IAM User Account: The IAM (Identity and Access Management) account of AWS has limited permissions. The root user account allocates permissions to the IAM user account. For instance, if there is an employee working as an administrator in a company, the access permissions given to that person will probably be administration access.
To visit the signup and log-in page of the AWS account, Click Here. Following is the AWS login web page:
What if the Same Credentials are Used for AWS and Amazon?
AWS Account and an Amazon account are two different types of accounts, but it is possible that the same credentials (email and password) are used to sign up and log in to both accounts. However, it is the same thing as creating accounts to two different websites using the same credentials.
The positive aspect of such a case is that there will be no need to remember the credentials of both accounts separately if the same email address is used in both. And this will keep the data integrated and connected.
But the negative aspect or the risk associated with it is that in case the security of any of the two accounts gets compromised, it will affect both accounts. For instance, if there is unauthorized access to the Amazon account, the security of the AWS account will also be compromised, and vice versa. So, compromised security of one account will also lead to unauthorized access to the other account. However, there are different measures that help to secure an AWS account. To study in detail, click here.
Conclusion
An AWS account is different from an Amazon account. In fact, the features of both accounts are entirely different from each other. AWS is a service provider platform, while Amazon accounts are used to sell or purchase products. It is possible to sign up for both accounts with the same credentials as well as with different credentials according to the user’s choice.
