Provide access to Key Vault keys, certificates, and secrets with an Azure role-based access control (preview)

• 8/30/2020
• 5 minutes to read
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Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) is an authorization system built on Azure Resource Manager that provides fine-grained access management of Azure resources.

Azure RBAC allows users to manage Key, Secrets, and Certificates permissions. It provides one place to manage all permissions across all key vaults.

The Azure RBAC model provides the ability to set permissions on different scope levels: management group, subscription, resource group, or individual resources. Azure RBAC for key vault also provides the ability to have separate permissions on individual keys, secrets, and certificates

For more information, see Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC).

Best Practices for individual keys, secrets, and certificates

Our recommendation is to use a vault per application per environment (Development, Pre-Production, and Production).

Individual keys, secrets, and certificates permissions should be used only for specific scenarios:

• Multi-layer applications that need to separate access control between layers

• Sharing individual secret between multiple applications

More about Azure Key Vault management guidelines, see:

• Azure Key Vault security overview
• Azure Key Vault service limits

Azure built-in roles for Key Vault data plane operations (preview)

For more information about Azure built-in roles definitions, see Azure built-in roles.

Using Azure RBAC secret, key, and certificate permissions with Key Vault

The new Azure RBAC permission model for key vault provides alternative to the vault access policy permissions model.

Prerequisites

To add role assignments, you must have:

• If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
• Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write and Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/delete permissions, such as User Access Administrator or Owner

Enable Azure RBAC permissions on Key Vault

1. Enable Azure RBAC permissions on new key vault:

   

2. Enable Azure RBAC permissions on existing key vault:

   

Assign role

Azure CLI command to create a role assignment:

az role assignment create --role <role_name_or_id> --assignee <assignee> --scope <scope>

In the Azure portal, the Azure role assignments screen is available for all resources on the Access control (IAM) tab.

Resource group scope role assignment

1. Go to key vault Resource Group.

2. Click Access control (IAM) > Add-role assignment>Add

3. Create Key Vault Reader role "Key Vault Reader (preview)" for current user

   

Azure CLI:

az role assignment create --role "Key Vault Reader (preview)" --assignee {i.e user@microsoft.com} --scope /subscriptions/{subscriptionid}/resourcegroups/{resource-group-name}

Above role assignment provides ability to list key vault objects in key vault.

Key Vault scope role assignment

1. Go to Key Vault > Access control (IAM) tab

2. Click Add-role assignment>Add

3. Create Key Secrets Officer role "Key Vault Secrets Officer (preview)" for current user.

   

Azure CLI:

az role assignment create --role "Key Vault Secrets Officer (preview)" --assignee {i.e jalichwa@microsoft.com} --scope /subscriptions/{subscriptionid}/resourcegroups/{resource-group-name}/providers/Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults/{key-vault-name}

After creating above role assignment you can create/update/delete secrets.

4. Create new secret ( Secrets > +Generate/Import) for testing secret level role assignment.

   

Secret scope role assignment

1. Open one of previously created secrets, notice Overview and Access control (IAM) (preview)

2. Click Access control(IAM)(preview) tab

   

3. Create Key Secrets Officer role "Key Vault Secrets Officer (preview)" for current user, same like it was done above for the Key Vault.

Azure CLI:

az role assignment create --role "Key Vault Secrets Officer (preview)" --assignee {i.e user@microsoft.com} --scope /subscriptions/{subscriptionid}/resourcegroups/{resource-group-name}/providers/Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults/{key-vault-name}/secrets/RBACSecret

Test and verify

1. Validate adding new secret without "Key Vault Secrets Officer" role on key vault level.

Go to key vault Access control (IAM) tab and remove "Key Vault Secrets Officer (preview)" role assignment for this resource.

Navigate to previously created secret. You can see all secret properties.

Create new secret ( Secrets > +Generate/Import) should show below error:

2. Validate secret editing without "Key Vault Secret Officer" role on secret level.

• Go to previously created secret Access Control (IAM) (preview) tab and remove "Key Vault Secrets Officer (preview)" role assignment for this resource.

• Navigate to previously created secret. You can see secret properties.

3. Validate secrets read without reader role on key vault level.

• Go to key vault resource group Access control (IAM) tab and remove "Key Vault Reader (preview)" role assignment.

• Navigating to key vault's Secrets tab should show below error:

Creating custom roles

az role definition create command

(CLI bash script)

az role definition create --role-definition '{ \
   "Name": "Backup Keys Operator", \
   "Description": "Perform key backup/restore operations", \
    "Actions": [ 
    ], \
    "DataActions": [ \
        "Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults/keys/read ", \
        "Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults/keys/backup/action", \
         "Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults/keys/restore/action" \
    ], \
    "NotDataActions": [ 
   ], \
    "AssignableScopes": ["/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}"] \
}'

For more Information about how to create custom roles, see:

Azure custom roles

Known limits and performance

• 2000 Azure role assignments per subscription

• Role assignments latency: at current expected performance, it will take up to 10 minutes (600 seconds) after role assignments is changed for role to be applied

Learn more

• Azure RBAC Overview
• Custom Roles Tutorial