What is Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)? RBAC Guide

• Role-Based Access Control Definition

  Role-Based Access Control Definition

  Role-based access control (RBAC) is a method of protecting sensitive data from improper access, modification, addition, or deletion. It allows employees to have access to the information required to fulfill their responsibilities. Access rights and permissions are given to employees based on their job roles and designations. This helps protect business-critical data against misuse.
• Basics of role-based access control

  Basics of role-based access control

  Three common principles of role-based access control include:

  1. User role assignment: The permission or access rights are granted only if the individual is assigned a role or a task.
  2. User role authorization: The active role of the user in the task must be authorized.
  3. User role permission and access rights: The individual can utilize their permission rights only if they’re given the authorization to perform their active role.

  Effective RBAC can help with granting systematic permissions and access to business-critical information to improve cybersecurity and with maintaining compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and more. Using an automated RBAC software solution can also provide structured templates to monitor user access levels and simplify the audit process.
• How does RBAC work?

  How does RBAC work?

  An access rights system leveraging RBAC works on the principle of least privilege to help ensure sensitive data security. Using RBAC can be extremely helpful for larger enterprises with a great number of employees where administrators are facing difficulty in assigning unique user credentials to each employee. With automated role-based access control, administrators can create user groups with similar permissions and rights, assign roles and responsibilities, and allow access to a defined set of resources.
• Benefits of RBAC

  Benefits of RBAC

  Limiting unnecessary employee access to business-critical information can help ensure security and compliance by:

  • Improving operational efficiency: Role-based access control can help reduce manual tasks and paperwork by streamlining the automation of access rights. With an RBAC software solution, enterprises can more easily assign, modify, add, and delete roles and responsibilities to enhance operational efficiency.
  • Demonstrating compliance: Implementing RBAC will help organizations demonstrate compliance with local, federal, and state regulations. This enables IT teams and administrators to manage access to confidential data more effectively. Financial and healthcare institutions can use RBAC to manage access to critical data, such as PCI and PHI.
• Best practices for implementing RBAC

  Best practices for implementing RBAC

  By following a few best practices, implementing role-based access control can be a simple process. Some best practices to help support RBAC include:

  • Note the current user permissions assigned to resources. It’s important to have detailed information and be able to easily view user access to applications and resources, such as software and hardware.
  • Use role-specific templates to assign access rights to only users who need them based on job responsibilities and standardize user credentials.
  • Track any modifications or changes made in user roles, access rights, and permissions to identify and investigate privilege abuses, suspicious account activity, and other vulnerabilities.
• Role-based access control in Azure AD

  Role-based access control in Azure AD

  Azure Active Directory provides two types of role-based access controls:

  1. Built-in roles: Azure AD supports many built-in roles. However, each role includes a fixed set of permissions that cannot be modified.
  2. Custom roles: Azure AD also supports custom roles, including a collection of permissions that can be modified depending on the role. Granting permissions using custom roles is a two-step process. It involves creating a custom Azure AD role and assigning the permissions from a preset list. A custom role can be assigned at an organization level or object scope level. The member with custom permission rights can have access to all the organization’s resources, while object-scope permissions are limited to a single application.
• RBAC vs. ABAC

  RBAC vs. ABAC

  Role-based access control and attribute-based access control (ABAC) are two different methods of access control. The major difference between the two is RBAC grants access based on the user roles and responsibilities while ABAC provides access based on environmental attributes, resource attributes, user attributes, and other attributes.

  RBAC is helpful for organizations in need of broader access control implementation, whereas ABAC can be used in specific conditions based on attributes that can change over time.