Which feature of AWS helps in monitoring and auditing IAM activities?

AWS CloudTrail is the feature that specifically aids in monitoring and auditing IAM (Identity and Access Management) activities within an AWS environment. It achieves this by logging detailed information about API calls made on your AWS account, which includes those made to IAM services.

When changes are made to IAM policies, user permissions, or role assignments, CloudTrail captures these events and provides visibility into who made the changes, what changes were made, and when they occurred. This is crucial for compliance and security audits because it helps organizations track and review actions that affect their security posture.

Additionally, CloudTrail logs can be analyzed to detect unusual behavior or unauthorized access attempts, thereby enhancing the overall security monitoring capabilities for IAM activities. This makes CloudTrail an essential tool for ensuring accountability and transparency in your AWS environment.

In contrast, AWS CloudFormation is focused on infrastructure as code and resource provisioning, AWS Config continuously monitors the configuration of your AWS resources for compliance but does not specifically log IAM API calls, and AWS Inspector is designed for assessing the security of applications running on AWS.