What is Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)?

Why RBAC is critical for securing cloud infrastructure

Cloud environments are fast-moving, highly dynamic, and constantly evolving. Without proper access control, things can spiral out of control. RBAC is a way to govern access control through pre-defined roles that users inherit permissions from directly. RBAC is essential because it enforces least privilege, ensuring users and services only get access to what they actually need. RBAC also helps keep your cloud environments compliant with major security frameworks like HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2.

Cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP offer native RBAC tools. The problem? They often leave gaps. Managing fine-grained permissions, monitoring drift, and maintaining compliance across multi-cloud setups isn’t straightforward. This is where third-party solutions like Wiz come in. Platforms with built-in CIEM capabilities provide deeper visibility, automate role enforcement, and continuously monitor for risky entitlements—helping organizations maintain least-privilege access at scale.

Key components of RBAC

RBAC keeps cloud access under control by structuring permissions around roles, not individual users. The diagram below provides a simplified picture of how RBAC is usually set up in cloud environments.

• Roles can be thought of as job-based permission buckets. Instead of giving Alice and Bob separate permissions, you create roles like “Developer,” “Ops,” and “Security Admin”—each with the right level of access. 

• Permissions define what each role can or cannot do—read data, deploy resources, manage users, etc. Roles group permissions logically, so you don’t have to configure them per user. Permissions can be an explicit Allow or Deny.

• Users are the humans (or services) that get assigned roles. Instead of managing individual access, you just drop a user into the right role and let RBAC handle the rest. 

• Role policies are rules that define who gets assigned to what role and when. These policies help automate and standardize role assignments instead of relying on ad-hoc access approvals.

• Role auditing is essential because over time, access can drift, and over-permissioned roles creep in. CIEM tools continuously monitor role usage, flag risky entitlements, and help teams remediate drift or overly permissive roles.

For example, in AWS, when a developer joins the organization, they can be assigned to a developer role and will inherit all necessary permissions from that role. 

Cloud-native tools such as AWS IAM Access Analyzer help enforce RBAC in real time and allow users to maintain a healthy data perimeter strategy for their organizations. 

RBAC vs. other access control models in cloud environments

When managing access in cloud environments, it’s crucial to understand how RBAC compares to other access control models. Here’s a breakdown:

In cloud environments, RBAC is often preferred due to its simplicity and alignment with organizational structures.

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How does RBAC work in practice?

In cloud environments, role-based access control is implemented differently across platforms. Let’s take a look.

AWS IAM roles and policies

In AWS, Identity and Access Management services allow users to provision roles and policies. Users can be assigned to roles that contain fine-grained policies. 

This AWS IAM policy defines two statements: The first allows the role to list all buckets in the AWS account, while the second explicitly denies permission to delete a bucket:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AllowListBuckets",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "s3:ListBuckets",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "DenyDeleteBuckets",
      "Effect": "Deny",
      "Action": "s3:DeleteBucket",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::*"
    }
  ]
}

Role-based access control in Azure

In Azure, to grant a user permission to list all storage accounts within a subscription, you can assign the Storage Account Contributor role at the subscription level. 

{
  "properties": {
    "displayName": "Deny Delete Storage Account",
    "policyType": "Custom",
    "mode": "All",
    "description": "This policy denies the deletion of the specified storage account.",
    "metadata": {
      "version": "1.0.0",
      "category": "Storage"
    },
    "parameters": {
      "storageAccountName": {
        "type": "String",
        "metadata": {
          "displayName": "Storage Account Name",
          "description": "The name of the storage account to protect from deletion."
        }
      }
    },
    "policyRule": {
      "if": {
        "allOf": [
          {
            "field": "type",
            "equals": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts"
          },
          {
            "field": "name",
            "equals": "[parameters('storageAccountName')]"
          },
          {
            "field": "Microsoft.Resources/deploymentScripts/operation",
            "equals": "delete"
          }
        ]
      },
      "then": {
        "effect": "deny"
      }
    }
  }
}

Google Cloud IAM

In Google Cloud, access control is managed through Identity and Access Management, which assigns roles to users, groups, or service accounts at various scopes, including projects, folders, and organizations. 

To prevent the deletion of a specific storage bucket, you can use an organization policy to restrict the storage.buckets.delete permission on that bucket. 

{
  "name": "projects/[PROJECT_ID]/policies/deny-delete-bucket",
  "spec": {
    "rules": [
      {
        "deny": {
          "permissions": ["storage.buckets.delete"],
          "resources": ["projects/[PROJECT_ID]/buckets/[BUCKET_NAME]"]
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

RBAC in Kubernetes

Kubernetes RBAC is a basic security model in K8s that allows administrators to define roles and users to control how resources are accessed. 

Key components of Kubernetes RBAC are…

• Role: Allows K8s admins to define a group of permissions within a namespace

• RoleBinding: Allows a user or a set of users to bind to a role and inherit its permissions within a namespace

Here’s an example of how to create a role in Kubernetes named pod-reader in the development namespace with permissions to get, list, and watch pods: 

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  namespace: production
  name: pod-reader-role
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["pods"]
  verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]

Next, we bind a user to the role within the same namespace:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  name: read-pods
  namespace: production
subjects:
- kind: User
  name: jane
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
  kind: Role
  name: pod-reader-role
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

The RoleBinding read-pods assigns the pod-reader Role to the user jane within the same namespace.

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Essential best practices for RBAC in the cloud

Here are some best practices to optimize RBAC in the cloud and reduce common mistakes in role assignments:

• Enforce the principle of least privilege (PoLP): Assign users only the permissions necessary for their specific roles. Use infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools like Terraform or AWS CloudFormation to codify roles and permissions in a repeatable and auditable way.

• Automate role assignments: Automate the assignment of roles based on user attributes or job functions to reduce manual errors and administrative overhead.

• Integrate RBAC with additional IAM security measures: Make the most of RBAC by integrating it with multi-factor authentication (MFA), identity federation, and other security measures. 

Scaling RBAC Securely with Wiz CIEM

While native cloud IAM tools provide the foundation for implementing RBAC, they often leave gaps—especially in multi-cloud environments where roles, permissions, and access policies can vary dramatically. This is where Wiz’s cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) capabilities come in.

Wiz’s CIEM capabilities give security teams the visibility and control you need to scale RBAC securely:

• Visualize effective permissions across clouds: Wiz automatically maps out who can access what across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes—down to the resource level—so you can detect unintended or risky access.

• Identify and remediate over-permissioned roles: Wiz continuously monitors for drift and privilege escalation. It flags excessive permissions and helps teams right-size roles based on real usage.

• Automate least-privilege enforcement: Wiz analyzes permission usage over time to recommend safer, tighter policies. It even suggests role cleanups to prevent sprawl.

• Ensure compliance across environments: Wiz tracks role assignments and access changes to support compliance with frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

• Secure identities in context: Wiz connects RBAC data to misconfigurations, exposed secrets, and runtime risks—so you can prioritize and remediate what actually matters.

Wiz doesn’t replace your IAM tools—it makes them smarter, safer, and more scalable.
See how Wiz CIEM can help you implement and enforce RBAC at cloud scale: Book a demo today.