Control Access Using Roles

Use the SDK to create and configure the roles that control the permissions of your users and API keys. For example as part of your automated process for deploying Deep Security Manager, your code can create the various roles that are suitable for the tasks that users perform, or that you perform using the API.

Roles should provide the minimal rights that users or your code require to perform their tasks.

For background information about roles, see Define roles for users in the Deep Security Help Center.

The following classes enable you to interact with roles:

AdministratorRolesApi: Create, modify, delete, search, describe, and list roles
Role: Represents a role and provides access to role properties
Rights classes: Several classes that represent access rights for Deep Security resources. For example, ComputerRights defines rights for interacting with computers, and ScheduledTaskRights defines rights for interacting with scheduled tasks.

General steps

Use the following general steps to create or modify a role:

Create a Role object and configure the properties:
- Provide a name to identify the role and, optionally, a description
- (Optional) Identify the computers and policies that the role can access
- (Optional) Add rights objects that dictate which tasks the role can perform on the computers and policies that it can access.
Create an AdministratorsRoleApi object and use it to create or modify the role on Deep Security Manager.

When you create a role, by default it has read access to all computers and policies, enables users to change their own password, and allows access to the Deep Security Manager console.

The following JSON represents an example data structure of a Role object. The data structure is useful for understanding how to configure the role's access rights:

The allComputers and allPolicies items control access to all computers and policies. If either are false, computerIDs and policyIDs items hold the IDs of the computers and policies that can be accessed
The rights item and its descendants correspond with the various rights classes that define access rights to Deep Security resources. To make this example concise, deeper levels of rights items are not shown.

{
    "name": "Auditor",
    "description": "",
    "urn": "urn:tmds:identity:us-east-ds-1:41342:role/Auditor",
    "immutable": false,
    "canOnlyManipulateUsersWithEqualOrLesserRights": false,
    "allComputers": true,
    "allPolicies": true,
    "allowUserInterface": true,
    "allowWebService": true,
    "rights": {
        "platformRights": {...},
        "antiMalwareRights": {...},
        "webReputationRights": {...},
        "firewallRights": {...},
        "intrusionPreventionRights": {...},
        "integrityMonitoringRights": {...},
        "logInspectionRights": {...},
        "applicationControlRights": {...},
        "hostedServiceRights": {...}
    },
    "ID": 2

}

To see the complete data structure of a Role object, see the 200 response for the Describe an Administrator Role operation in the API Reference.

The following example creates a Role object and sets the name:

Python

run_reports_role = api.Role()
run_reports_role.name = "Computer Status and Properties"

JavaScript

const runReportsRole = new api.Role();
runReportsRole.name = "Computer Status and Properties";

Java

Role runReportsRole = new Role();
runReportsRole.setName("Computer Status and Properties");

Use a ComputerRights object to specify access rights to computers, and then use the object to configure a PlatformRights object. The PlatformRights object corresponds with the platformRights data item in the previous JSON code:

Python

computer_rights = api.ComputerRights()
computer_rights.can_edit_computer_properties = True

platform_rights = api.PlatformRights() 
platform_rights.computer_rights = computer_rights

JavaScript

const computerRights = new api.ComputerRights();
computerRights.canEditComputerProperties = true;

const platformRights = new api.PlatformRights(); 
platformRights.computerRights = computerRights;

Java

ComputerRights computerRights = new ComputerRights();
computerRights.setCanEditComputerProperties(Boolean.FALSE);

PlatformRights platformRights = new PlatformRights(); 
platformRights.setComputerRights(computerRights);

Add the platform rights to a Rights object, and then add the Rights object to the role.

Python

rights = api.Rights()
rights.platform_rights = platform_rights

run_reports_role.rights = rights

JavaScript

const rights = new api.Rights();
rights.platformRights = platformRights;

runReportsRole.rights = rights;

Java

Rights rights = new Rights();
rights.setPlatformRights(platformRights);

runReportsRole.setRights(rights);

Finally, create the role on Deep Security manager:

Python

admin_roles_api = api.AdministratorRolesApi(api.ApiClient(configuration))
new_role = admin_roles_api.create_administrator_role(run_reports_role, api_version)

JavaScript

const adminRolesApi = new api.AdministratorRolesApi();
return adminRolesApi.createAdministratorRole(runReportsRole, apiVersion);

Java

AdministratorRolesApi adminRolesApi = new AdministratorRolesApi();
runReportsRole = adminRolesApi.createAdministratorRole(runReportsRole, apiVersion);

Example: Create a role

The following example creates a role that can find computers, determine whether each computer has a policy assigned, and assigns a policy as needed. The Auditor role does not satisfy these requirements because it does not provide the rights for modifying computers.

Python

View source

# Create the Role object
run_reports_role = api.Role()
run_reports_role.name = "Computer Status and Properties"

# No need for access to policies
run_reports_role.all_policies = False

# Add rights to edit computer properties
computer_rights = api.ComputerRights()
computer_rights.can_edit_computer_properties = True

platform_rights = api.PlatformRights()
platform_rights.computer_rights = computer_rights

rights = api.Rights()
rights.platform_rights = platform_rights

# Add the rights to the role
run_reports_role.rights = rights

# Create the role on Deep Security Manager
admin_roles_api = api.AdministratorRolesApi(api.ApiClient(configuration))
new_role = admin_roles_api.create_administrator_role(run_reports_role, api_version)

return "The role ID for the " + str(run_reports_role.name) + " role is " + str(new_role.id) + "."

JavaScript

View source

// Create the Role object
const runReportsRole = new api.Role();
runReportsRole.name = "Computer Status and Properties";

// No need for access to policies
runReportsRole.allPolicies = false;

// Add rights to edit computer properties
const computerRights = new api.ComputerRights();
computerRights.canEditComputerProperties = true;

const platformRights = new api.PlatformRights();
platformRights.computerRights = computerRights;

const rights = new api.Rights();
rights.platformRights = platformRights;

// Add the rights to the role
runReportsRole.rights = rights;

// Create the role on Deep Security Manager
const adminRolesApi = new api.AdministratorRolesApi();
adminRolesApi
  .createAdministratorRole(runReportsRole, apiVersion)
  .then(newRole => {
    resolve(newRole.ID);
  })
  .catch(error => {
    reject(error);
  });

Java

View source

// Create the Role object
Role runReportsRole = new Role();
runReportsRole.setName("Computer Status and Properties");

// No need for access to policies
runReportsRole.setAllPolicies(Boolean.FALSE);

// Add rights to edit computer properties
ComputerRights computerRights = new ComputerRights();
computerRights.setCanEditComputerProperties(Boolean.FALSE);

PlatformRights platformRights = new PlatformRights();
platformRights.setComputerRights(computerRights);

Rights rights = new Rights();
rights.setPlatformRights(platformRights);

// Add rights to the role
runReportsRole.setRights(rights);

// Create the role on Deep Security Manager
AdministratorRolesApi adminRolesApi = new AdministratorRolesApi();
runReportsRole = adminRolesApi.createAdministratorRole(runReportsRole, apiVersion);

return runReportsRole.getID();

Also see the Create an Administrator Role operation in the API Reference.