RBAC (role-based access control)

Role-based access control (RBAC) is an authorization model where permissions belong to roles, such as "viewer", "billing admin" or "deployer", and users get access by being given a role. Changing what a role can do changes it for everyone who holds it, which keeps permissions reviewable as a team grows.

How it works

A role lists allowed actions on resources. A binding assigns that role to users, groups or service accounts, sometimes within a scope such as one tenant or one namespace. Each request is checked against the roles the caller holds.

In Kubernetes, a Role named pod-reader might allow the verbs get, list and watch on pods in namespace dev. A RoleBinding grants it to user asha. Then kubectl auth can-i delete pods -n dev --as asha answers no.

Why it matters in production

Most access incidents come from roles that grew too broad: everyone is admin because it was quicker. Start from least privilege, keep roles few and named after jobs, and review bindings regularly. In multi-tenant products, every role check also has to respect tenant boundaries.