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Fine-Grained Access Control for SaaS Platforms

SecureAuth enables SaaS providers to enforce precise, contextual, and dynamic access decisions that align with security policies, regulatory requirements, and business models, ensuring the right identities access the right resources, under the right conditions.

Common challenges​

  • Complex tenant structures with multiple tenants, nested organizations, and delegated admin models
  • Dynamic collaboration with permissions that shift based on relationships, not just static roles
  • Contextual security needs including device trust, network location, authentication method, and risk score
  • API-level precision requiring control down to object/action-level for sensitive operations
  • Compliance requirements for GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, and other regulatory mandates

SecureAuth capabilities​

Policy-based access control (PBAC)

Define and enforce policies using user attributes, roles, risk signals, and context through SecureAuth’s visual policy editor or OPA/Rego integration.

Role-based access control (RBAC)

Assign basic roles for baseline permissions, combining with PBAC for additional enforcement layers.

Attribute-based access control (ABAC)

Make decisions based on user, resource, and environmental attributes such as org ID, subscription tier, and resource sensitivity.

Relationship-based access control (FGA)

Model permissions on user–resource relationships (Zanzibar-inspired) to handle group membership, nested orgs, and shared resources.

OAuth 2.1 scopes & claims

Apply fine-grained API authorization with static or dynamic scopes and embed contextual claims directly in tokens.

Contextual & conditional access

Control access based on device trust, authentication strength, network location, or behavioral risk allowing conditional enforcement at runtime.

SecureAuth API authorizers

Deploy as a PDP alongside APIs or gateways to evaluate policies locally with synchronized central decisions.

Feature gating

Enable or restrict functionality by subscription plan, entitlement level, or custom conditions for upsell opportunities.

Implementation approach​

  1. Identify resources and operations requiring fine-grained control
  2. Define relevant scopes, claims, and/or relationship tuples
  3. Configure PBAC/FGA policies in SecureAuth
  4. Enforce policies:
    • Inline during token issuance
    • Via backend introspection
    • At the API gateway with SecureAuth Authorizers
  5. Stream policy decisions and events to SIEM for audit and compliance

Benefits​

✔ Enforce least-privilege at scale
✔ Meet regulatory and industry compliance requirements
✔ Prevent cross-tenant data exposure
✔ Enable tiered feature access aligned to business models
✔ Support scalable collaboration in complex SaaS environments

Industries
  • Multi-tenant SaaS. Platforms serving multiple business customers with strict data separation
  • Regulated industries. Organizations with strict data separation and compliance requirements
  • Collaborative tools. Applications with nested teams, projects, and complex sharing models
  • API-driven platforms. Services requiring object-level or action-level authorization controls
  • Modernizing SaaS. Products upgrading from static RBAC to dynamic, policy-driven access control