Introducing RBAC: Modern Access Control for Offensive Security Teams

New Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) on Trickest Platform represents a new way in how we approach team access management for large offensive security teams. Rather than broad permission categories, RBAC provides granular control that aligns with actual job functions, ongoing projects and specific organizational needs.

The Challenge of Security Team Access Management

Your Red Team Engineer needs to execute exploitation workflows but shouldn't modify production workflows for Attack Surface Management purposes. Your team lead requires full project oversight without needing access to global platform settings. Meanwhile, stakeholders need visibility into security findings and Attack Surface Management data without exposure to sensitive operational details.

RBAC addresses this by implementing the principle of least privilege at scale, ensuring each team member has precisely the access required for their role.

Key Benefits:

• Granular permission control aligned with job functions and projects
• Enhanced team productivity without security compromises
• Simplified management through standardized role definitions

A Two-Layer Permission Model

Effective RBAC requires understanding both organizational hierarchy and project-specific needs. Trickest implements this through dual permission layers that work together smoothly.

Global Roles

Global roles define platform-wide capabilities and reflect organizational hierarchy:

• Super Admin - Complete platform authority. This role encompasses user management, global configuration control, and cross-organizational visibility. Typically assigned to CISOs, Security Directors, and Platform Administrators who need comprehensive oversight.

• Workspace Admin - Project-level autonomy. These users can create and manage their own workspace while viewing organizational users and teams. Perfect for team leads and senior engineers who need workspace control but not global administrative privileges.

• Member - Standard user access. Members focus on their assigned projects and have different permissions per-workspace. This role covers the majority of security professionals including analysts, engineers, operators and consultants.

Workspace Roles

Within individual workspaces, roles define specific operational capabilities:

• Owner - Complete workspace control including workspace user management, creation and deletion of the workflows, variable configuration and more.

• Write - Full operational access for building and maintaining security workflows

• Execute - Runtime permissions for workflow execution and monitoring

• Read - Comprehensive viewing access without modification capabilities

• Solution Insights - Results-focused access for solution dashboards

Implementing RBAC for your Offensive Security Team

Let's examine how a typical security organization might structure access using these roles:

• Security Director - receives Super Admin access to establish the foundational platform configuration. She invites team members, configures global settings, adds members to specific workspaces and oversees entire platform.

• Senior Security Engineer - operates as a Workspace Admin for ad-hoc and ongoing projects. He creates dedicated environments for different engagements, assigns appropriate team members, and maintains full control over his projects without accessing unrelated organizational areas.

• Red Team Member - Gets execute permissions on specific workspaces for ongoing engagements. This allows running pre-configured assessment workflows, monitoring execution, and reviewing results while preventing accidental modification of critical workflows logic.

• Security Analyst - Receives Solution Insights access to review security findings and go through Attack Surface Management data. This provides necessary visibility into assessment outcomes and infrastructure configuration without exposure to workflows that provides the data.

Best Practices for RBAC Success on Trickest Platform

Conservative Start: Begin with minimal required access and expand based on demonstrated need. Permission escalation is easier to manage than privilege reduction.

Team-Centric Thinking: Group users with similar responsibilities to ensure consistent access patterns and simplify ongoing management.

Regular Auditing: Implement quarterly access reviews to verify permissions align with current roles and projects.

Conclusion

When done right, role-based access control removes the roadblocks that slow security teams down, all while keeping critical boundaries in place. It’s less about restriction and more about enabling secure, confident action.

For teams running complex security operations, RBAC provides the structure needed to scale and automate without chaos. It's the foundation for workflows that are both secure and efficient.

For full setup instructions and usage details, visit our documentation.