Oracle Cloud Security Basics

Overview

OCI IAM policy syntax (Allow group X to manage Y in compartment Z) is the number one enterprise complaint. One wrong policy locks you out of your own resources. One missing verb and your automation silently fails with a 404 NotAuthorizedOrNotFound that looks like a missing resource. This skill is the IAM policy cheat sheet with tested patterns for common access scenarios.

Purpose: Write correct IAM policies, manage API keys securely, and understand the OCI permission model.

Prerequisites

• OCI Python SDK — pip install oci
• OCI config file at ~/.oci/config with valid credentials (user, fingerprint, tenancy, region, key_file)
• Tenancy administrator access (to create policies) or membership in a group with manage policies permission
• Python 3.8+

Instructions

Step 1: Understand the Policy Verb Hierarchy

OCI uses four verbs in ascending order of privilege. Each higher verb includes all lower verbs: