[role="xpack"]
[[authorization]]
== User authorization

The {stack-security-features} add _authorization_, which is the process of determining whether the user behind an incoming request is allowed to execute
the request. 

This process takes place after the user is successfully identified and 
<<setting-up-authentication,authenticated>>. 

[[roles]]
[discrete]
=== Role-based access control

The {security-features} provide a role-based access control (RBAC) mechanism,
which enables you to authorize users by assigning privileges to roles and
assigning roles to users or groups. 

image::security/authorization/images/authorization.png[This image illustrates role-based access control]

The authorization process revolves around the following constructs:

_Secured Resource_::
A resource to which access is restricted. Indices, aliases, documents, fields,
users, and the {es} cluster itself are all examples of secured objects.

_Privilege_::
A named group of one or more actions that a user may execute against a
secured resource. Each secured resource has its own sets of available privileges.
For example, `read` is an index privilege that represents all actions that enable
reading the indexed/stored data. For a complete list of available privileges
see <<security-privileges>>.

_Permissions_::
A set of one or more privileges against a secured resource. Permissions can
easily be described in words, here are few examples:
 * `read` privilege on the `products` data stream or index
 * `manage` privilege on the cluster
 * `run_as` privilege on `john` user
 * `read` privilege on documents that match query X
 * `read` privilege on `credit_card` field

_Role_::
A named set of permissions

_User_::
The authenticated user.

_Group_::
One or more groups to which a user belongs. Groups are not supported in some 
realms, such as native, file, or PKI realms. 

A role has a unique name and identifies a set of permissions that translate to
privileges on resources. You can associate a user or group with an arbitrary 
number of roles. When you map roles to groups, the roles of a user in that group 
are the combination of the roles assigned to that group and the roles assigned 
to that user. Likewise, the total set of permissions that a user has is defined 
by the union of the permissions in all its roles.

The method for assigning roles to users varies depending on which realms you use 
to authenticate users. For more information, see <<mapping-roles>>.

[[attributes]]
[discrete]
=== Attribute-based access control

The {security-features} also provide an attribute-based access control (ABAC)
mechanism, which enables you to use attributes to restrict access to documents
in search queries and aggregations. For example, you can assign attributes to
users and documents, then implement an access policy in a role definition. Users
with that role can read a specific document only if they have all the required
attributes. 

For more information, see 
https://www.elastic.co/blog/attribute-based-access-control-with-xpack[Document-level attribute-based access control with X-Pack 6.1].
