Best practice to make S3 file accessible for Redshift through COPY operation for anyone - amazon-s3

Question

I want to publish a tutorial where a data from sample tsv file S3 is used by Redshift. Ideally I want it to be simple copy paste operation required to follow the exercises step by step, similar to what's in Load Sample Data from Amazon S3. The problem is with the first data import task using COPY command as it only supports S3, or EMR based load.
This seems like a simple requirement but no hassle-free way to really do it with Redshift COPY (I can make the file available for browser download without any problem but COPY requires CREDENTIALS parameter…)
Variety of options for Redshift COPY Authorization parameters is quite rich:
Should I ask user to Create an IAM Role for Amazon Redshift
himself?
Should I create it myself and publish the IAM role ARN? Sounds most hassle
free (copy paste) but security wise doesn't sound well…? Do I need to restrict S3 permissions to limit the access to only that particular file for that role?
Should I try temporary access instead?

Answer 1

You are correct:
Data can be imported into Amazon Redshift from Amazon S3 via the COPY command
The COPY command requires permission to access the data stored in Amazon S3. This can be granted either via:
Credentials (Access Key + Secret Key) associated with an IAM User, or
An IAM Role
You cannot create a Role for people and let them use it, because their Amazon Redshift cluster will be running in a different AWS Account than your IAM Role. You could possibly grant trust access so that other accounts can use the role, but this is not necessarily a wise thing to do.
As for credentials, they could either use their own or ones the you supply. They can access their own Access Key + Secret Key in the IAM console.
If you wish to supply credentials for them to use, you could create an IAM User that has permission only to access the Amazon S3 files they need. It is normally unwise to publish your AWS credentials because they might expose a security hole, so you should think carefully before doing this.
At the end of the day, it's probably best to show them the correct process so they understand how to obtain their own credentials. Security is very important in the cloud, so you would also be teaching them good security practice, in additional to Amazon Redshift itself.