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role-based access control (RBAC)

By Alexander S. Gillis

What is role-based access control (RBAC)?

Role-based access control (RBAC) is a method of restricting network access based on the roles of individual users within an enterprise. Organizations use RBAC -- also called role-based security -- to parse levels of access based on an employee's roles and responsibilities.

Limiting network access is important for organizations that have many workers, have contractors or allow third parties -- such as customers and vendors -- network access, as monitoring network access effectively can be difficult. Companies that depend on RBAC are better able to secure their sensitive data and critical applications. RBAC ensures that users access only the information they need to do their jobs, preventing them from accessing information that doesn't pertain to them.

An employee's role in an organization determines the permissions an individual is granted, ensuring that lower-level employees can't access sensitive information or perform high-level tasks.

RBAC is based on the concept of roles and privileges. Access is based on factors such as authority, competency and responsibility. Network access and other resources -- such as access to specific files or programs -- can be limited by employee. For example, specific files might be read-only, but temporary access can be granted to specific files or programs to complete a task. Organizations can designate whether a user is an end user, administrator or specialist user. These roles can also overlap or give different permission levels to specific roles.

Benefits of RBAC

There are multiple benefits to using RBAC, including the following:

Best practices for role-based access control implementations

There are several best practices organizations should follow for implementing RBAC, including the following:

RBAC vs. ABAC

Role-based access control and attribute-based access control (ABAC) are both access control methods but differ in their approaches. While RBAC grants access rights depending on the roles of users, ABAC controls access based on a combination of the following categories:

As an access control method, RBAC relies on predefined roles, while ABAC is more dynamic in comparison -- offering more granular control.

For example, organizations should use RBAC for coarse-grained access control, such as giving all professors in a university access to Google for doing research or giving all contractors access to corporate email. On the other hand, companies should use ABAC for fine-grained access control or if they need to make decisions under specific conditions -- for example, giving professors access to Google only if they work in building X and teach freshman classes.

Examples of RBAC

Organizations can designate a user by role or group. Adding a user to a role group means the new user has access to all the permissions in that specific group.

An organization might want to split roles to include administrators, job-specific end users or guests. Example roles might include the following:

Software engineers, for example, won't have access to the tools or files HR or marketers in the same company have, but will have access to the tools they need to complete their tasks. Likewise, those in marketing will have access to the tools they need based on their role, but not the HR or software engineering tools. The permissions of each user depend upon the role and position of each employee.

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23 Mar 2023

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