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RBAC vs. ACL: what's the difference and how do they work together?

Blog post from WorkOS

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
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Word Count
1,200
Language
English
Hacker News Points
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Summary

Here's a neutral and interesting summary of the text in one paragraph: Role-based access control (RBAC) groups permissions into roles within a system or organization, assigning users to roles based on job responsibilities, while Access Control Lists (ACLs) specify which users or system processes have access to objects and what operations are allowed. RBAC provides centralized management of user permissions across systems, scaling well in large organizations but lacking fine-grained control available with ACLs. In contrast, ACLs offer precise, granular control of permissions at the individual user or resource level, but can become complex and difficult to manage. Many organizations use both RBAC and ACLs together to achieve a balanced approach to access control, while other options like Mandatory Access Control (MAC), Discretionary Access Control (DAC), Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), and Relationship-Based Access Control (ReBAC) offer alternative approaches to managing user permissions.