Introduction to service accounts

Service accounts are essential components of identity and access management (IAM) within Google Cloud Platform (GCP), enabling secure interactions between applications, services, and GCP resources. Unlike user accounts, which represent individual human users, service accounts represent non-human entities, such as applications, virtual machines, or services.

Service accounts are associated with a set of credentials, typically in the form of JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) or OAuth2 access tokens, which are used to authenticate requests made to GCP APIs and services. These credentials can be securely stored and managed within GCP, ensuring that only authorized applications and services can access resources and perform actions within the cloud environment.

Prerequisites

Hardware : GCP

Google account

Open Cloud Console

Open Menu > IAM & Admin > Service Accounts

Click on Create Service Account.

Give the Service account name. It will automatically give the service account ID. Give the Service account description if you want. Click Create

Give the access role for the service account. Click Done

Now the Service Account created.

To delete service account.

Select the Checkbox of  the service account which you want to delete. Press Delete

We can either disable or delete the service account by press Disable or delete respectively.

Introduction to service accounts