Security & deployment
What is role-based access control (rbac)?
Role-based access control is a permission model in which access is granted to roles rather than to individuals, so a person's ability to submit, approve, or administer print jobs follows from the role they hold.
Also known as: RBAC, access control, permissions
The roles in a print operation
Most operations resolve to four:
- Requester: submits jobs, sees only their own, tracks their queue position.
- Operator: reviews and approves submissions, manages the queue and the machines.
- Administrator: configures the operation, sees all usage, exports reporting.
- Auditor: read-only access to records without the ability to change them.
Least privilege, in practice
The rule is that access is denied unless explicitly granted, and each role receives exactly what its work requires. The practical benefit in an institution is offboarding: when a term ends and hundreds of student accounts deactivate, permissions disappear with the role rather than lingering as individually granted exceptions nobody remembers to revoke.