Overview of Data RBAC
Data role-based access control (data RBAC) is a security model that uses individual user roles to restrict user access to data within an organization. With data RBAC, administrators can define scopes and assign them to users to help ensure that users can access only the necessary data for their job functions.
This page provides an overview of data RBAC, and helps you understand how labels and scopes work together to define data access permissions.
Difference between data RBAC and feature RBAC
Data RBAC and feature RBAC are both methods for controlling access within a system, but they focus on different aspects.
Feature RBAC controls access to specific features or functionalities within a system. It determines which features are accessible to users based on their roles. For example, a junior analyst might have access to only view dashboards but not to create or modify detection rules, while a senior analyst might have the permissions to create and manage detection rules. For more information about feature RBAC, see Configure feature access control using IAM.
Data RBAC controls access to specific data or information within a system. It controls whether a user can view, edit, or delete data based on their roles. For example, in a customer relationship management (CRM) system, a sales representative might have access to customer contact data but not finance data, while a finance manager might have access to the finance data but not the customer contact data.
Data RBAC and feature RBAC are often used together to provide a comprehensive access control system. For example, a user might be allowed to access a specific feature (feature RBAC) and then, within that feature, their access to specific data might be restricted based on their role (data RBAC).
Plan your implementation
To plan your implementation, review the list of Google SecOps predefined Google SecOps roles and permissions against your organization requirements. Devise a strategy to define scopes that your organization needs and to label incoming data. Identify which members of your organization must have access to the data associated with these scopes. If your organization requires IAM policies that differ from the predefined Google SecOps roles, create custom roles to support these requirements.
User roles
Users can have either scoped data access (scoped users) or global data access (global users).
Scoped users have limited access to data based on the scopes assigned. These scopes restrict their visibility and actions to specific data. The specific permissions associated with scoped access are detailed in the following table.
Global users have no assigned scopes and have unrestricted access to all data within Google SecOps. The specific permissions associated with global access are detailed in the following table.
Global access overrides scoped access. If a user is assigned both a global role and a scoped role, they have access to all data, regardless of any restrictions imposed by the scoped role.
Data RBAC administrators can create scopes and assign them to users to control
their data access within Google SecOps. To restrict a user to certain
scopes, you must assign them the Chronicle API Restricted Data Access
(roles/chronicle.restrictedDataAccess) role along with
a predefined or a custom role. The Chronicle API Restricted Data Access role
identifies a user as a scoped user. You don't need to assign the Chronicle
Restricted Data Access role to users who need global data access.
The following roles can be assigned to users:
| Access type | Roles | Permissions |
|---|---|---|
| Predefined global access | Global users can be granted any of the predefined IAM roles. | |
| Predefined scoped read-only access | Chronicle API Restricted Data Access (roles/chronicle.restrictedDataAccess) and Chronicle API Restricted Data Access Viewer (roles/chronicle.restrictedDataAccessViewer)
|
Chronicle API Restricted Data Access Viewer |
| Custom scoped access | Chronicle API Restricted Data Access (roles/chronicle.restrictedDataAccess) and custom role
|
Custom permissions within features |
| Custom global access | chronicle.globalDataAccessScopes.permit permission and custom role
|
Global permissions within features |
The following is a description of each access type presented in the table:
Predefined global access: this access is typically required for users who need access to all the data. You can assign one or more roles to a user based on the required permissions.
Predefined scoped read-only access: this access is for users who need read-only access. The Chronicle API Restricted Data Access role identifies a user as a scoped user. The Chronicle API Restricted Data Access Viewer role gives view access to users within their features.
Custom scoped access: the Chronicle API Restricted Data Access role
identifies a user as a scoped user. The custom role specifies the features that
the user can access. The scopes added to the Chronicle API Restricted Data Access
role specify the data that the users can access in the features.
To ensure RBAC custom scopes function correctly, don't include the
chronicle.DataAccessScopes.permit or chronicle.globalDataAccessScopes.permit
permissions when creating the custom roles. These permissions might be included
if you've used the prebuilt Chronicle API Editor or Chronicle API Admin as a
starting point for your custom roles.
Custom global access: this access is for users who need unrestricted
permissions within their assigned features. To give custom global access to a
user, you must specify the chronicle.globalDataAccessScopes.permit permission
in addition to the custom role that is assigned to the user.
Access control with scopes and labels
Google SecOps lets you control data access to users by using scopes. Scopes are defined with the help of labels that define the data that a user within the scope has access to. During ingestion, metadata is assigned to data in the form of labels such as namespace (optional), ingestion metadata (optional), and log type (required). These are default labels that are applied to data during ingestion. Additionally, you can create custom labels. You can use both default and custom labels to define your scopes and the data access level that the scopes will define.
Data visibility with allow and deny labels
Each scope contains one or more allow access labels and optionally, deny access labels. Allow access labels grant users access to the data that is associated with the label. Deny access labels deny users access to the data that is associated with the label. Deny access labels override the allow access labels in restricting the user access.
In a scope definition, allow access labels of the same type (for example, log type) are combined using the OR operator, while labels of different types (for example, log type and a custom label) are combined using the AND operator. Deny access labels are combined using the OR operator. When multiple deny access labels are applied within a scope, access is denied if they match ANY of those labels.
For example, consider a Cloud Logging system that categorizes logs using the following label types:
Log type: Access, System, Firewall
Namespace: App1, App2, Database
Severity: Critical, Warning
Consider a scope called Restricted logs that has the following access:
| Label type | Allowed values | Denied values |
|---|---|---|
| Log type | Access, Firewall | System |
| Namespace | App1 | App2, Database |
| Severity | Warning | Critical |
The scope definition looks like this:
Allow: (Log type: "Access" OR "Firewall") AND (Namespace: "App1") AND (Severity: "Warning")
Deny: Log type: "System" OR Namespace: App2 OR Namespace: Database OR Severity: "Critical"
Examples of logs matching the scope:
- Access log from App1 with Severity: Warning
- Firewall log from App1 with Severity: Warning
Examples of logs not matching the scope:
- System log from App1 with Severity: Warning
- Access log from Database with Severity: Warning
- Firewall log from App2 with Severity: Critical
Data visibility in enriched events
Enriched events are security events that have been enhanced with additional context and information beyond what the raw log data contains. Enriched events are accessible within a scope only if its base event is accessible within the scope and any of the enriched labels don't include any of the scope's deny labels.
For example, consider a raw log that indicates a failed login attempt from an IP
address and has an enriched label user_risk: high (indicates a high-risk user).
A user with a scope that has the deny label user_risk: high can't see failed
login attempts by high-risk users.
Impact of data RBAC on Google Security Operations features
After data RBAC is configured, users start seeing filtered data in Google Security Operations features. The impact depends on how the feature is integrated with the underlying data. To understand how data RBAC impacts each feature, see Impact of data RBAC Google Security Operations features.