Tutorial: Add ReBAC to Your RAG Pipeline With Descope

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines are transforming AI applications by allowing the retrieval of documents from a vector database to generate context-based responses. However, they face a significant challenge in maintaining document permissions, as these systems can inadvertently expose sensitive data due to the loss of original access controls when documents are converted to vectors. Traditional Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is inadequate for dynamic and complex permission scenarios. This text discusses integrating Relationship-Based Access Control (ReBAC) using Descope into RAG pipelines to solve this problem by respecting document ownership, team membership, and sharing relationships. ReBAC allows for flexible permissions management by modeling real-world relationships and dynamically adjusting to organizational changes, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive information. This solution enhances security by conducting post-retrieval filtering, where Descope's authorization checks determine which documents a user can view, thereby preventing unauthorized data from reaching the language model. The integration with Descope also supports monitoring, auditing, and performance optimization, making it suitable for scalable and secure enterprise applications.