ABAC Overview and Configuration Process

Overview

Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) is an authorization policy that defines permissions based on user attributes. You can use user attributes that come from different identity sources, such as IAM Identity Center or an external identity provider, to manage access to Huawei Cloud resources in IAM Identity Center. Using user attributes as tags simplifies the process of creating fine-grained permissions on Huawei Cloud and ensures that users can obtain only the Huawei Cloud resource permissions that match these tags.

For example, you can associate User_A and User_B with the same permission set, and then perform access control based on their display names. When User_A and User_B log in to the user portal to access the resources defined in the permission set, IAM Identity Center matches their display names with the resource tag values. They can access the resources only if their display names match the resource tag values. If User_A no longer needs to access some resources in this permission set, you can simply modify the resource tags to disable their access without updating any permission set configurations.

ABAC also helps reduce the number of permission sets you need to create and manage in IAM Identity Center. This is because users associated with the same permission set can now have unique permissions based on their user attributes. You can use these user attributes in a permission set to control access to Huawei Cloud resources and simplify permissions management.

Advantages of ABAC

ABAC requires fewer permission sets: You do not have to create different permission sets for different users, so the number of permission sets and the complexity of permissions management can be reduced.
ABAC helps the team change and grow quickly: You can tag resources appropriately when creating resources. Then the system automatically grants permissions to the created resources based on user attributes.
Use employee attributes in the enterprise directory through ABAC: You can use the existing employee attributes of any identity source configured in IAM Identity Center to make access control decisions on Huawei Cloud.

Configuration Process

The following table lists the operations required for preparing Huawei Cloud resources and configuring IAM Identity Center for ABAC access control. To use ABAC, you need to perform all the operations listed in the table.

**Table 1** ABAC configuration process
Procedure	Description	Reference
Adding tags to a resource	To perform ABAC in IAM Identity Center, you first need to add tags to the target resources. The resource tag value must be consistent with the user attribute, so that the match is successful in permissions policies and the access control policies can be applied. For example, if you want to use the username attribute for access control and the username is User1, the resource tag value must also be User1.	Adding Tags to Cloud Resources
Configuring the identity source	You can choose IAM Identity Center or an external identity provider as your identity source. The user attributes of both identity sources can support ABAC. You can switch between the two identity sources in IAM Identity Center.	Changing the Identity Source
Enabling and configuring ABAC in IAM Identity Center	IAM Identity Center as identity source: Enable ABAC on the IAM Identity Center console and add user attributes for configuring ABAC. External identity provider as identity source: Enable ABAC on the IAM Identity Center console, and then configure ABAC in IAM Identity Center or the external identity provider.	Enabling and Configuring Access Control Attributes
Creating a permissions policy for ABAC	You can create a custom identity policy in the permission set and use access control attributes to create ABAC-related rules to allow users to access resources only with matching tags. The user attributes you added in the previous step are used as tags for access control decisions. You can use the "PrincipalTag/key" condition key to reference the access control attributes in the permission policy.	Creating Permissions Policies for ABAC
Associating accounts with users/groups and permission sets	You can associate related accounts and IAM Identity Center users with the permission set created in the previous step. In this way, when a user logs in to the user portal to access resources under the associated accounts, they can only access resources whose tags match the user attributes.	Associating Accounts with Users/Groups and Permission Sets
Logging in as an IAM Identity Center user and accessing resources	After the preceding steps are complete, the IAM Identity Center user associated with related accounts and permission sets can log in to the user portal and obtain the resource access permissions based on the matched user attributes.	Logging In as an IAM Identity Center User and Accessing Resources