Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is the authorisation system that governs who can do what with Azure resources. It allows you to assign fine-grained permissions to users, groups, and service principals at various scopes within your Azure environment.

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The Problem RBAC Solves

Without a structured authorisation system, managing access to cloud resources quickly becomes chaotic:

• Giving everyone full admin access is a security nightmare
• Managing individual permissions per user per resource does not scale
• Compliance and auditing become impossible without a clear model

RBAC solves these problems by combining roles (what you can do), security principals (who you are), and scopes (where you can do it).

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The Three Elements of RBAC

1. Security Principal (Who)

A security principal is the entity requesting access. It can be:

Principal	Description
User	An individual with an account in Entra ID
Group	A set of users; all members inherit the assignment
Service principal	An identity used by an application or service
Managed identity	A special service principal managed automatically by Azure