Azure Key Vault Roles and Access Control Explained

Azure Key Vault offers a robust access control system, which allows administrators to manage access to their keys, secrets, and certificates.

This system is based on roles, which define the permissions and actions that a user or service can perform on Key Vault resources.

There are two types of roles: built-in and custom. Built-in roles are predefined by Azure and provide common access control scenarios.

Custom roles can be created to meet specific business needs.

To manage access, administrators can assign roles to users, groups, or services. This is done through Azure Active Directory (AAD) and the Azure portal.

Azure Key Vault Roles are a crucial aspect of securing your data. You can assign roles to users or groups to control access to your Key Vault.

To assign roles, you can use the Key Vault Reader role at the scope of the Key Vault, as shown in Example 3. This allows users to read one or more secrets.

You can also use Azure attribute-based access control (Azure ABAC) conditions to constrain role assignments. This means you can restrict the roles and principals that can be assigned roles. For example, you can constrain the roles that can be assigned to specific groups or users, as illustrated in Example 2.

Constraining role assignments can be done in several ways, including:

Here's a summary of the ways to constrain role assignments:

Roles in Azure Key Vault are designed to provide granular access control to your resources. You can assign roles to users, groups, or service principals to manage access to your key vault.

To delegate role assignment management, you can assign the Owner or User Access Administrator role to another user. This allows them to assign roles to users, groups, or service principals at the same scope.

For example, Alice can assign the User Access Administrator role to Dara, who can then assign any role to any user, group, or service principal at the same scope.

Here are some common roles in Azure Key Vault:

Role assignments can be constrained with conditions, such as limiting the roles that can be assigned, or the types of principals that can be assigned roles.

Custom roles can be a game-changer for managing access to Azure resources. They allow you to define custom permissions based on conditions.

To delegate Azure role assignment management to others, you can use conditions. This is a key concept in Azure attribute-based access control (ABAC).

You can delegate Azure role assignment management with conditions to others, giving them more control over who has access to what. This is a flexible way to manage access.

Here's a list of some examples of delegating Azure role assignment management with conditions:

The Attestation Reader is a powerful tool that allows you to read the attestation provider properties.

It can read the attestation service status using the action "Microsoft.Attestation/attestationProviders/attestation/read" or "Microsoft.Attestation/attestationProviders/read".

This action is available under the "Microsoft.Attestation" namespace, and it provides a way to get the attestation service status.

There are no other actions available under "NotActions" for the Attestation Reader.

You can also use the action "Microsoft.Authorization/*/read" to read roles and role assignments, which is a different namespace altogether.

Here is a table summarizing the actions available for the Attestation Reader:

Note that there are no other actions available for the Attestation Reader, and it does not have any data actions.

When managing roles in Azure, it's essential to understand the different types of users and their permissions. Specifically, let's look at the "Key Vault Reader" role, which allows users to read metadata of key vaults and its certificates, keys, and secrets, but cannot read sensitive values such as secret contents or key material.

This role has the following permissions: Microsoft.Authorization/*/read, Microsoft.Insights/alertRules/*, Microsoft.Resources/deployments/*, and more.

A "Key Vault Administrator" has more extensive permissions, including performing all data plane operations on a key vault and all objects in it, except managing key vault resources or role assignments.

Here are some key differences between the Key Vault Reader and Key Vault Administrator roles:

Note that these roles only work for key vaults that use the 'Azure role-based access control' permission model.

Built-in roles with conditions are a great way to restrict role assignments and ensure that users only have access to the resources they need. The Key Vault Data Access Administrator role is an example of a built-in role with conditions.

This role is designed to manage access to Key Vault secrets, certificates, and keys, and it constrains role assignments to a specific set of Azure Key Vault roles. These roles include Key Vault Administrator, Key Vault Certificates Officer, Key Vault Crypto Officer, Key Vault Crypto Service Encryption User, Key Vault Crypto User, Key Vault Reader, Key Vault Secrets Officer, and Key Vault Secrets User.

If you want to further constrain role assignments, you can add your own condition to constrain the types of principals (users, groups, or service principals) or specific principals that can be assigned the Key Vault roles.

Here are the Key Vault roles that are constrained by the Key Vault Data Access Administrator role:

You can assign Azure roles to grant access to Azure resources, such as the Website Contributor role for creating and managing websites in a subscription.

To delegate role assignment management, you can assign the Owner or User Access Administrator role to a user, allowing them to assign any role to any user, group, or service principal at the same scope.

You can constrain role assignments with conditions, such as limiting the roles that can be assigned or the types of principals that can be assigned roles. This is implemented using Azure attribute-based access control (Azure ABAC) conditions.

Here are the ways to constrain role assignments:

Some built-in roles, such as the Key Vault Data Access Administrator role, already have conditions that constrain role assignments. For example, it only allows management of access to Key Vault secrets, certificates, and keys, without the ability to assign privileged roles like Owner or User Access Administrator.