What are tags in AWS used for?

Tags in AWS are indeed key-value pairs that are primarily used for organizing and managing AWS resources. This capability allows users to group resources by specific criteria that are meaningful to them, such as by project, department, or environment (development, testing, or production). By applying tags, you can easily track costs associated with specific resources, automate resource management, and improve resource organization.

For instance, if a company has multiple resources related to different applications, tagging can help categorize these resources based on the application name or the owner responsible for them. This organization promotes better visibility and control over AWS resources, facilitating management tasks like billing analysis, access control, and resource identification.

Additional functionalities are also supported through tags, such as allowing IAM policies to use conditions based on the tags assigned to resources, enabling fine-grained access control.

In contrast, the other options pertain to different aspects of AWS services. While encryption is important for data security, it is not related to tagging. Network security and geographic regions also have their specific AWS features separate from the tagging functionality.