Why basic roles in BigQuery are a bad idea

Photo by Arthur Mazi on Unsplash

Why basic roles in BigQuery are a bad idea

ยท

2 min read

Paul Atreides: "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing".

Remember to avoid as much as possible using the basic roles in BigQuery such as Owner, Editor or Viewer.

It may sound 'easier' to manage access using them, but it's a bad idea.

They make way for a number of problems:

  • overly broad permissions: Editor = several thousand permissions, including read / write on ALL datasets, of course very far from the least privilege principle

  • no granularity: not much wiggle room between these 3 roles

  • security risk: one compromised Editor means a lot of trouble

  • compliance: it's also a bad idea because it can land you in hot water with privacy regulations๐Ÿ˜

    What to do instead:

  • use one of many predefined roles that grant granular access to perform a specific set of tasks

  • if you don't find the one you need (and the combination of multiple predefined ones that cover your use-case is too vast), you can create a custom role, bundling together minimum amount of rights you need to perform a particular task

  • again, follow the principle of least privilege

  • regularly review who has privilege to do what and why they need it, then clean up

  • remember that you can also enforce dataset, table and even column/row-level security for a even more granular control

  • use service accounts with minimal rights to handle processes

  • use groups for easier management of privileges for a particular role (in a team) or function

Found it useful? Subscribe to my Analytics newsletter at notjustsql.com.

Did you find this article valuable?

Support Datawise by becoming a sponsor. Any amount is appreciated!

ย