Administrators can tailor roles and permissions according to their specific requirements within the PlexTrac platform. This customization allows them to manage user access and privileges efficiently, ensuring a secure and organized environment.
If custom roles are required, create these before adding users. Otherwise, new users will need an assignment to an existing role, and adding the custom role later will be an additional step.
When creating custom roles, PlexTrac provides the following recommendations:
Create a role without any permissions to assign unused or intermittent access users. By implementing this practice, administrators can prevent unnecessary access to sensitive information or critical functionalities, mitigating potential risks of granting unnecessary permissions.
Use the Principle of Least Privilege when assessing role permissions. This principle advocates granting users the minimum access required to perform their designated tasks effectively. By adhering to this principle, administrators can significantly reduce the attack surface and the potential impact of security breaches, enhancing the overall security posture of the system.
Conduct periodic user and role audits for an accurate user access posture. Regular user and role audits are essential to maintaining a consistently secure user access environment. Periodic audits allow administrators to review and verify the permissions assigned to each user, ensuring that access rights align with individuals' current roles and responsibilities. This process helps identify deviations or discrepancies, ensuring the user access posture remains accurate and up-to-date.
When assigning roles to a user, it is essential to give each role a unique name. Although PlexTrac generates a unique ID for each role in the backend, the user interface may display seemingly identical values, leading to confusion, as shown below.
Step 1: From the Role Based Access page under "Security" in the Admin Dashboard, click Create Role.
Step 2: Enter the fields provided on the page. Role Name and Role Description are required.
Templates as Baseline: Select the desired baseline template from the drop-down menu when creating a new role.
Role Name: This required field is the role's name and will appear on the Role Based Access page.
Enabled: This feature displays if the role is activated and provides a simple way to disable access temporarily.
Description: A brief description of the role (required).
Users Assigned: Place the cursor in the box and type a user to find and associate users to this role. If a user already belongs to another role, additional screens will appear to disable the previous role or inherit an additional role to existing permissions.
User List: Assigned users will appear in a list under the User Assigned box. They can be deleted by hovering over the name with the cursor and clicking the red trash can icon.
All users MUST be assigned to at least one role, and the platform will provide an error message if an attempt is made to disable a role that contains a user with no other assigned roles.
Step 3: Scroll down the page to select/deselect permissions for the role by clicking the provided tasks to define permissions. A purple button means permission has been given for the role, while a grey button means no permission has been enabled. Clicking a purple button again greys it out and disables authorization.
In this example, all permissions except the ability to manage style guides and access to the admin dashboard where the style guides are managed were removed.
Step 4: Click Save.
A summary page appears to review the list of users and permissions. Click Edit if necessary to adjust.
The new role is listed with the number of users assigned and permissions.
Every role will have at least five permissions displayed on this page, even if no tasks are enabled due to permissions that cannot be configured. For example, if two task buttons were enabled, a number of "7" will show as the total enabled permissions.
The Role Based Access (RBAC) button under "Security" in the Admin Dashboard gives administrators granular control over permissions within PlexTrac, such as actions allowed for a specific user, permissions for customers, access to client data, and report access that restricts viewing sensitive data.
PlexTrac applies roles considering the tenant (instance) and client. This enables teams to grant users the privileges required to accomplish tasks for specific clients.
A user’s tenant role governs what portions of the platform they can access, including the modules, tools, and UI elements presented for use. A user’s permissions can be further scoped in the context of individual clients. Users must have a role in the context of each client.
PlexTrac has three default roles: Administrator, Standard User, and Analyst.
The Security: Role Based Access page includes permission settings on the following topics, which themselves may have additional subtopics allowing for further refinement:
Administration Permissions
Administration Access
Account Information
Custom Templates
Email Settings
General Settings
Integration Settings
Parser Actions
License Management
Security
Style Guides
Tags Management
Analytics Permissions
Analytics Access
Assessments Permissions
Assessment Questionnaires Management
Assessments Access
Assessment Reviewers
Client Permissions
Client Access
Client Asset Management
Client Management
Reports Permissions
Report Access
Report Artifacts
Report Findings
Report Procedures
Runbooks Permissions
Runbooks Access
Runbooks Methodologies
Runbooks Procedures
Runbooks Tactics
Runbooks Techniques
Runbooks Engagements
Runbooks Testplans
Customizations
Customizations Access
Content Library Permissions
NarrativesDB
WriteupsDB
RunbooksDB
Priorities Permissions
Priorities
An icon within the RBAC list identifies permissions that require a license.
For a tenancy, a license can be in different states:
A valid key: In this scenario, no banner message will appear.
An invalid license key: In this scenario, a banner appears (when adding users or viewing a role within the Admin Dashboard), and the admin needs to contact licensing@plextrac.com.
More licenses needed: This scenario applies to situations where the number of licenses remaining is three or fewer, and the admin should contact licensing@plextrac.com. A banner appears when adding users or viewing a role within the Admin Dashboard.
No license key: This scenario could apply to a new instance, and the admin needs to contact licensing@plextrac.com. No banner message is provided.
Platform-wide permissions include access to specific modules (WriteupsDB, Assessments, etc.), the Account Admin section, platform settings, and user management. These permissions are specific to platform access and assigned in the Role Based Access area of the Admin Dashboard.
Users may be assigned to more than one role. Tenant permissions are additive. Adding users to a less-privileged role does not remove other roles or restrict permissions.
Within a tenancy, the following business rules apply:
Administrator: A tenant administrator can access all tools, modules, and UI elements on the platform (all aspects of the Admin Dashboard).
Standard User: A standard user can access all modules and UI elements outside the Admin Dashboard.
Analyst: An analyst user cannot access the Content Library or Runbooks modules. Additionally, most UI elements that provide create or edit capabilities are unavailable.
Admin user permissions can be viewed by clicking the Administrator box on the Security: Role Based Access page.
An administrator is PlexTrac's highest permission role, and admins have complete control and access over every part of the application.
Click the Standard User box on the Security: Role Based Access page to view standard user permissions.
The differences between Standard User and Administrator roles:
No access to Administration Access
No access to Account information
No access to Custom Templates
No access to Email Settings
No access to General Settings
No access to Integration Settings
No access to Parser Actions
No access to License Management
No access to Security
No access to Style Guides
No access to Tags Management
View only permissions for client users (cannot create or delete client users)
View only permissions on Customizations (cannot credit, edit, or remove)
Cannot manage repositories in the Content Library
View only ability on Priorities (cannot create, delete or edit)
View only ability on priority scoring equations (cannot create, delete, or edit)
Analyst user permissions can be viewed by clicking the Analyst box on the Security: Role Based Access page.
Analysts have the same restrictions as Standard Users, plus the following:
View only permissions for assessment questionnaires
Cannot delete assessments
Cannot add or remove reviewers from assessments
Cannot create or delete clients
Can only view client assets (cannot create, import, delete or edit assets)
Cannot manage client users
Can only view or export reports
Can only update or view report findings
Cannot access report procedures
Can only view runbook engagements (no access to other sections of runbooks)
Cannot access Content Library
Client-based permissions are specific to using and accessing Clients, Reports, and Findings. These permissions are assigned on a client level, and more information can be found by visiting Add User to Client.
The role assigned to a user at the client level sets the client, reports, and findings permissions for that client.
In the context of a client, the following business rules apply:
Administrator: A client administrator can edit any data associated with the client, such as the client record, assets, and reports, and manage access of client users.
Standard User: A standard user can edit any data associated with the client, such as the client record, assets and reports.
Analyst: An analyst user can view client assets and related data, reports in published status, upload and delete artifacts in reports, and change the remediation status of findings.