When it comes to providing access to the workspaces and controlling their security in Power BI Service, permission management is one area that must be handled with utmost care to protect data and allow proper sharing. The following are the recommended practices:
Use Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Apply roles to manage access, especially in teams where a person plays different roles based on their tasks. In Power BI, users can be assigned four primary workspace roles. These are Admin, Member, Contributor, and Viewer. Assign the role according to the intended access:
Admin: Manages everything about the workspace, including the settings, permissions, and contents.
Member: Creates, publishes content, and makes changes to it; no rights to manage workspace settings.
Contributor: Assists in updating changed and added contents, including datasets, but has no rights to publish or remove reports.
Viewer: is restricted to looking at the contents only and making no changes whatsoever.
This arrangement helps prevent barriers, as everyone understands what tasks are assigned to whom, especially when it comes to sensitive tasks like report modifications and permission changes.
Employ Security Groups for Administrative Efficiency: Permissions should not be assigned to large teams, as opposed to individuals. On the contrary, for better management efficiency, security groups (453 Azure AD groups) should be used. This makes it easier to onboard and offboard users from the workspace since one only adds or removes the users from the security group instead of assigning permissions to each user in the workspace.
Enable Row-Level Security (RLS): In order to allow users access only to the data corresponding to them, it is necessary to configure Row-Level Security (RLS) on the data. You may create RLS and assign security roles at the dataset level so that when users access reports, they do not view everything but only what is allowed to them. This is vital in a situation where different teams use different structures of data but work within the same workspace.
Structure Workspaces along Project or Functional Lines: Concentrate on workspaces according to the project, department, or function they serve. This prevents information and the board from being overwhelmed optimizes the availability of data to the user and makes it easier to organize the reports and information. For example, you can have separate workspaces for marketing, finance, and sales teams. This also allows for enforcing regulations on access rights when needed, depending on the project.
Implement Sensitivity Labels: To better protect your Power BI assets, apply sensitivity labels to classify and safeguard them. These labels can be configured to restrict access to reports and datasets based on their sensitivity. Make sure these labels are logically consistent with your company’s compliance rules.
Conduct Routine Audits and Monitoring of Access: Regularly review and audit who is granted access to workspaces and datasets, particularly as teams grow or change. Power BI has access to activity logs to monitor activity and who accesses it, making it easier to check whether users have the right permissions and if any unauthorized access happens.
Implementing these recommendations helps ensure that access to the workspace is well structured and secured and that users are granted permissions appropriate to their functions and duties.
