Cerbos Review: A Developer's Perspective on Modern Access Control

The management of user access to resources across a variety of services is becoming an increasingly difficult task in today’s cloud-native systems, which are becoming increasingly complex in terms of security. Cerbos is an open-source policy decision point (PDP) that provides a robust and centralized solution for managing access control across all of your applications. Its goal is to simplify and standardize this process. In this study, we will take a comprehensive look at Cerbos from the point of view of a developer. We will discuss its open-source offering (Cerbos PDP) and its enterprise-grade solution (Cerbos Hub), as well as its adaptability in terms of connecting with contemporary ecosystems.

What is Cerbos?

For the purpose of managing access control and authorization, Cerbos is a policy engine that is enterprise-ready, open-source, and configurable. It is an authorization solution which makes fine-grained access controls easy to implement and manage, making authorization more secure and more adaptable to changing requirements, while saving months of developer time. It makes it possible for apps to delegate authorization decisions to a centralized policy engine, which simplifies the management of who is able to do what within an application. The application is designed to be language-independent as well as extremely expandable, and it offers support for a wide variety of frameworks, languages, and Identity Providers (IdPs).

Cerbos PDP (Policy Decision Point) – Open-Source Version

It is the Cerbos PDP that serves as the system’s key component, offering a centralized point from which decisions regarding access can be made in a context-aware manner. It gives developers the ability to design and manage rules for a wide variety of resources, actions, and attributes (such as users, roles, and permissions) without requiring them to explicitly incorporate sophisticated logic in the application code.

Key Features:

1. Decouples Business Logic and Access Control: With Cerbos, you are able to establish access controls in a manner that is distinct from the logic of your application, which results in application code that is cleaner and easier to maintain.

2. Flexible Policy Language: Cerbos makes use of a sophisticated policy language that is declarative in nature. This language enables developers to build rules based on criteria such as resource properties, user roles, and even environmental elements (for example, the time of day or geographical location).

3. Seamless Integration: In order to facilitate its seamless incorporation into pre-existing application architectures, the PDP was developed. The software development kits (SDKs) and instructions that Cerbos offers allow for a speedy integration with all of the major languages and frameworks, regardless of whether you are utilizing REST APIs, gRPC, or any other communication protocols.

4. Open-Source: Cerbos PDP is a free and open-source project that allows users to customize its source code. Additionally, it is available for usage without cost. Along with a wide variety of resources that have been donated by the community, the active community ensures that regular updates and bug fixes are implemented.

How It Works:

• Policy Decision: When Cerbos receives a request for access to a resource, it analyzes the policies that are pertinent to the situation and then returns a decision (either allowing or denying access) depending on the present circumstances.

• Decentralized Policy Management: As a result of the fact that policies are managed independently from the core application logic, it is possible to update or modify them without having to recompile your program.

For more details on the PDP, the official documentation and tutorials provide step-by-step instructions on setting up and configuring Cerbos within your application.

Cerbos Hub – Enterprise Solution

Cerbos PDP is responsible for providing the fundamental functionality for access control. Cerbos Hub,on the other hand, is an enterprise-grade solution that was created to expand and enhance Cerbos for larger businesses. A number of additional capabilities, like policy versioning, audit logging, and increased access restrictions, are included in Cerbos Hub. Cerbos PDP is for implementing authorization, whereas Cerbos Hub is the authorization management solution. 

These features are designed specifically for complicated enterprise situations.

Key Features of Cerbos Hub:

1. Centralized Policy Management:A user-friendly interface is provided by Cerbos Hub for the purpose of maintaining and versioning rules across various instances of Cerbos PDP. This feature is especially helpful for enterprises that operate in environments that involve multiple teams and larger operations.

2. Audit Logging & Monitoring:When it comes to enterprise environments, security and compliance are of the utmost importance. It is much simpler to keep track of and monitor access behavior when using Cerbos Hub since it provides complete audit logs for policy modifications, access decisions, and user activity.

3. Granular Permissions and Roles:Because Cerbos Hub enables fine-grained role administration and the creation of individualized access controls, it guarantees that only authorized users are able to access critical resources.

4. Support for Multiple Environments: Within a single platform, organizations are able to manage rules across numerous deployment environments (such as development, staging, and production), which makes it simpler for them to manage complicated infrastructures.

5. High Availability: High availability options are available for Cerbos Hub, which was developed for mission-critical applications. These configurations guarantee that your access control requirements will be met without interruption.

For enterprise organizations, Cerbos Hub offers a comprehensive platform to centralize and scale access management across diverse teams and applications. More information about Cerbos Hub can be found in the documentation and webpage.

Cerbos in Modern Ecosystems

The ecosystem compatibility of Cerbos is one of the most notable advantages of this platform. Cerbos is able to integrate without any difficulty into your technology stack, regardless of whether you are dealing with monolithic applications, microservices, or serverless architectures. SDKs and API integrations allow it to function with a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, including Python, Go, Java, and Node.js, among others. Spring, Django, and Express are some examples of frameworks that it is compatible with. In addition, Cerbos is capable of integrating with a wide variety of Identity Providers (IdPs), which makes it possible to have user authentication procedures that are seamless.

Integration Highlights:

• Identity Providers (IdPs): Cerbos integrates with popular IdPs like Okta, Auth0, and Active Directory, enabling seamless user authentication and authorization.

• Languages and Frameworks: Cerbos offers guides for integrating with all major programming languages and frameworks, ensuring that developers can implement access control policies no matter their tech stack.

• Kubernetes and Cloud-Native: Cerbos also integrates well with Kubernetes and other cloud-native tools, making it a great choice for containerized environments.

You can find further integration guides and details on supported ecosystems on the Cerbos Ecosystem page.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to administering access control at a large scale, Cerbos stands out as a solution that is both comprehensive and versatile. It offers a robust method to divorce access control from business logic, which makes applications easier to maintain and more secure. This is true whether you are using the open-source Cerbos PDP for small projects or the enterprise-grade Cerbos Hub for large enterprises alike.

The combination of a declarative policy language, smooth ecosystem interfaces, and sophisticated capabilities such as audit logging and centralized management (with Cerbos Hub) that Cerbos offers makes it an exceptional option for developers who are interested in implementing fine-grained and scalable access control in their applications.

The open-source nature of Cerbos, in conjunction with its enterprise solution for large-scale use cases, guarantees that it will be able to develop alongside your company as your requirements and requirements change. In order to manage user access across modern systems, Cerbos offers a framework that is both robust and flexible. This framework is available to businesses of all sizes, from small startups to huge enterprises.