Authorization

Authorization in Brigade consists of roles with particular scopes, which are granted to users and service accounts. When users interact with Brigade via the brig CLI or when a service account interacts with Brigade via an SDK, Brigade checks to be sure the requestor is sufficiently authorized before proceeding.

The three core authorization components in Brigade are:

• Users
• Service Accounts
• Roles

Users are generated in the system after successful authentication with the selected third-party auth provider and the creation of service accounts and role assignments is the responsibility of the administrator of Brigade.

Note: There is one method to have role assignments be automatically granted for a given set of users upon their first login to Brigade. The role specifically grants system-level admin privileges to each designated user. Details on configuring this deployment option can be seen in the Authentication doc.

Users

A User in Brigade represents a human user authenticated into the system via the third-party auth provider selected during Brigade’s deployment. There is no mechanism to create users outside of this authentication system. Users are assigned roles granting scoped permissions around their interactions with resources in Brigade.

In addition to viewing a particular user’s details, administrators can list, lock, unlock and delete users. All of these management functions exist under the brig users suite of commands. To see the full suite, issue the following help command:

$ brig users --help

Service Accounts

A Service Account in Brigade represents a non-human actor that can be assigned a role granting scoped permissions for interacting with resources in Brigade. A common pattern is to create a service account for a gateway and assign it an EVENT_CREATOR role such that it may submit events into Brigade.

Administrators may create, list, get, lock, unlock and delete service accounts. All of these management functions exist under the brig service-accounts suite of commands. To see the full suite, issue the following help command:

$ brig service-accounts --help

Roles

A Role in Brigade represents a scoped set of permissions around resource access within Brigade, which can then be assigned to a User or Service Account. There exist system-level roles as well as project-level roles.

Administrators may grant, revoke and list roles, either at the system-level or the project-level. All of these management functions exist under the brig roles or brig project roles suites of commands. To see the full suites, issue the following help commands:

$ brig roles --help
$ brig project roles --help

System-level Roles

System-level roles in Brigade are as follows:

• ADMIN - Enables system management including system-level permissions for other users and service accounts.
• EVENT_CREATOR- Enables creation of events for all projects. An event source must be provided for each assignment of this role.
• PROJECT_CREATOR - Enables creation of new projects. When a user with this role assignment creates a new project, they are automatically granted all project-level roles for that project.
• READER- Enables global read-only access to Brigade.

Each role is itself a sub-command under brig role grant or brig role revoke. For example, to grant the ADMIN role to user Mary, the following command would be issued:

$ brig role grant ADMIN --user Mary

Any system role may also be granted to a service account.

Project-level Roles

Project-level roles in Brigade are as follows:

• PROJECT_ADMIN - Enables management of all aspects of the project, including its secrets, as well as project-level permissions for other users and service accounts.
• PROJECT_DEVELOPER - Enables updating the project definition, but does NOT enable management of the project’s secrets or project-level permissions for other users and service accounts.
• PROJECT_USER - Enables creation and management of events associated with the project

Each role is itself a sub-command under brig project role grant or brig project role revoke. For example, to grant the PROJECT_ADMIN role to user Mary for project Arecibo, the following command would be issued:

$ brig project role grant ADMIN --id Arecibo --user Mary

Any project role may also be granted to a service account.