Google IAM lost: A Cloud identity guide
At first glance, identity and access management (IAM) may appear to be a gradual ascent. Managing login credentials and access control according to an employee’s position within an organisation is not too tough. But once you begin configuring IAM, that pleasant hill may change.
It may feel abruptly like a precipitous mountain slope: Understanding key identification concepts is the foundation for establishing security boundaries in the cloud, thus it’s problematic when terminology and concepts overlap and become difficult to follow.
Let’s begin by dissecting the ideas of least privilege and separation of roles, two fundamental Google IAM access control principles, to assist you get back on solid ground. They are different even though they are frequently mixed together. Separation of duties mandates that these rights be divided according to work responsibility, whereas least-privilege holds that you should only grant the minimal amount of rights necessary to complete a task.
Both are meant to lessen the effects of an undesirable deed committed within your cloud environment. There are various climber classifications, just like on Mount Everest. Only a small number of climbers conduct expeditions, and even fewer are guides. Although some of these roles may overlap, guides and other specialised positions are concentrated on helping climbers reach the summit of the mountain.
For instance, you wouldn’t want another haphazard climber attempting to take charge of the operation and maybe endangering people. You want a seasoned expedition leader in command.
How to reach the pinnacle of access control
Google cloud can now begin their ascent up the access control mountain. You must map identities to the individuals in your organisation in order to create an IAM architecture that adheres to the ideas of least privilege and division of roles.
Though it can seem apparent, concepts like personalities, principals, groups, roles, and allow and deny policies can be intimidating. They can help you understand these words so you can get past base camp and stop feeling lost.
Let’s go over some of the terms you should know while setting up IAM on Google Cloud.
Principal: Something that requires access in order to operate on a Google Cloud resource. These objects can be Cloud Identity domains that have access to resources, groups, Google Workspace accounts, end-user or service accounts, etc. Use the mnemonic, “A principal is your pal in the cloud,” to help you remember this term.
Role: A group of permissions that together provide access to a resource is called a role.
Policy: A group of responsibilities linked to a resource is called a policy. A policy determines whether to grant or refuse a principal access to a resource.
Recall that they spoke about persons and groups? These are equivalent in essence. A persona is a role in the workplace. You might have a persona that is identified as a security analyst or platform engineer, for instance. When you map the human members of your organisation to these job functions or personas, these personas become your groups. This is significant because you want to give groups, not principals, the authority or roles.
Managing Google IAM: Continuing to climb the mountain
Let’s put a few of these ideas to use in an actual situation. Consider yourself a platform developer working for a fledgling company. In the beginning, you manually assign each person a role depending on their needs. Given that it looks simpler to grant everyone “editor” rights, you might even employ simple roles.
This method works great for small teams, but as your business grows and your need for access control grows as well, the complexity of handling all those rights will also increase. Teams reorganise, new hires join, and duties change. Attempting to achieve least-privilege and separation of roles while manually tracking these changes rapidly becomes a nightmare.
You may overcome this scalability issue with your Google IAM architecture by using person mapping. You form groups according to job functions from your org chart, rather than concentrating on individual principals. Developers, platform engineers, data scientists, and security engineers are a few examples of the groups you may have. Next, the roles required for each group to carry out their designated responsibilities are assigned.
Roles and groups can be linked to streamline administration and guarantee uniform access for people performing comparable tasks. Imagine Varsha, a software developer, needs access to a web application housed on Google Cloud. The Google IAM process with person mapping might resemble this:
- Describe the person: Varsha works as a software developer on a web application that is run by Cloud Run.
- Assign the squad: The “web-app-developer” group is where software engineers for this web application are allocated to.
- Give suitable roles: The “Cloud Run Developer role” is assigned to the “web-app-developer” group, giving them read and write access to all Cloud Run resources hosted by Google Cloud.
This strategy preserves a scalable and manageable access management architecture while guaranteeing Varsha and other software engineers have the access they require. Roles assigned to groups also result in an Google IAM configuration that is easy to automate and self-documenting.
In conclusion, by correctly utilising IAM’s building pieces, you will be able to:
Simplify the onboarding process by assigning new hires to the right group automatically based on their job function and allowing them access as needed. Decrease the overhead of administration: By developing an IAM architecture that is self-documenting, you can manage rights at the group level and save time and effort.
Boost security: You may reduce the possibility of over-granting permissions to your principals by implementing uniform access control across roles that are identical to one another.
Auditing should be made easier: Clearly defined group names based on job functions make it easier to track access and spot possible problems.
You may make that IAM mountain back into a hill by grasping these fundamental ideas and applying strategies like persona mapping. By utilising a scalable and flexible Identity and Access Management (IAM) architecture that expands with your company, you will be moving towards identity-first access control in the cloud.
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