role assignment key vault

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az keyvault role assignment

Manage role assignments.

az keyvault role assignment create

Create a new role assignment for a user, group, or service principal.

Required Parameters

Role name or id.

Scope at which the role assignment or definition applies to, e.g., "/" or "/keys" or "/keys/{keyname}".

Optional Parameters

Represent a user, group, or service principal. supported format: object id, user sign-in name, or service principal name.

Use this parameter instead of '--assignee' to bypass graph permission issues. This parameter only works with object ids for users, groups, service principals, and managed identities. For managed identities use the principal id. For service principals, use the object id and not the app id.

The principal type of assignee.

Name of the HSM.

Full URI of the HSM. If specified all other 'Id' arguments should be omitted.

Name of the role assignment.

Increase logging verbosity to show all debug logs.

Show this help message and exit.

Only show errors, suppressing warnings.

Output format.

JMESPath query string. See http://jmespath.org/ for more information and examples.

Name or ID of subscription. You can configure the default subscription using az account set -s NAME_OR_ID .

Increase logging verbosity. Use --debug for full debug logs.

az keyvault role assignment delete

Delete a role assignment.

Space-separated role assignment ids.

az keyvault role assignment list

List role assignments.

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Manage role-based access control for Azure Key Vault keys, certificates, and secrets using PowerShell

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Vault access policies vs. RBAC permission model

Updating an existing key vault to use the rbac permission model, assigning users permissions on individual secrets, keys, or certificates.

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Previously, the biggest downside of managing Key Vault access was the need to configure two things to give someone access to secrets, keys, or certificates in a particular Key Vault. First, we had to grant permissions on the Key Vault resource in Azure using access control (IAM); then we had to create a separate access policy in the Key Vault granting the user the appropriate permissions on objects such as keys, secrets, and certificates.

This model does not give us granular access management on individual secrets, certificates, or keys. This means that when someone has Read access on secrets specified in a Key Vault access policy, they can access all the secrets in that Key Vault.

Creating a new Key Vault with the RBAC permission model

We will be using the following command to create a new Key Vault with the RBAC permission model. There is a new parameter, EnableRbacAuthorization , which configures the Key Vault to use RBAC authorization instead of traditional vault access policies.

Creating a new Key Vault using the EnableRbacAuthorization parameter

Once created, we can see that the permission model is set as "Azure role-based access control," and creating an individual access policy is no longer allowed.

Azure role based access control as the permission model

We can also update an existing key vault to use the RBAC permission model using the following PowerShell command:

To change RBAC permissions, we need the Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write permission, which automatically comes with the Owner and User Access Administrator roles.

Although we can update the permission model on a Key Vault, creating a new Key Vault with the RBAC permission model is still the best practice; since the current access policies on the Key Vault will no longer be used, this may result in permission issues. When you manually change the permission model on a Key Vault in Azure Portal, you get the following warning highlighting that the existing users and applications that are currently allowed access will be affected.

Warning on updating the permission model

Now, let's create a new Key Vault secret with the below.

Creating a new secret in a Key Vault

We can now assign a user an appropriate Key Vault role on that specific secret. First, to get the built-in Key Vault roles, we can use the following:

Listing built in Key Vault Roles in Azure

To assign the user the "Key Vault Administrator" role on the secret "SuperSecret," we will run the next command. "ObjectID" in the following command represents the object ID of the user, which can easily be found in the user properties in Azure AD.

Creating a new role assignment on an individual secret

So, the user is now on the access list of the individual secret, "SuperSecret," with the "Key Vault Administrator" role.

Access control list of a secret

Now, the user " [email protected] " should be able to access the secret. If the user does not have at least "Key Vault Reader" access on the Key Vault itself, then the user will not be allowed to list the secrets in the Key Vault but will still be able to access the secret directly using PowerShell. This is because the role assignment is made on the secret object and not on the entire Key Vault.

Accessing a Key Vault secret using PowerShell

Now let's use another secret named "AnotherSuperSecret," but this time the user that has been allowed access on the first secret will not have permission on this one.

Trying to access a secret without permission

As expected, the user cannot access the second secret, as no permissions are allowed.

Similarly, we can do the same on keys and certificates by assigning users with the appropriate roles on a specific key or certificate using the correct scope.

To assign a user the "Key Vault Certificates Officer" role on a specific certificate, we can use the following:

A new role assignment on an individual certificate

And to assign a user the "Key Vault Certificates Officer" role on a specific key, we can use this:

A new role assignment on an individual key

Key Vaults are essential and need to be secured as much as possible by implementing strong permission management. Azure now allows us to use the new RBAC permission model to assign permissions granularly and flexibly to users or applications with new built-in roles on individual secrets, certificates, or keys.

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Azure RBAC (role-based access control) and Key Vault access

Microsoft recently began enforcing the use of the Azure RBAC (role-based access control) which is a change from the previously used access policies. Azure RBAC comes with a unified access control model that makes it easier to manage and has improved security. This could affect your organization in many ways, but in this blog I want to point out how it will affect access to Key Vault Secrets. Key Vault secrets may be used by your application administrators, consulting partners or 3rd party applications and users for various automations.

What are Key Vault secrets?

Azure Key Vault Secrets are a type of resource in Microsoft Azure that allow you to securely store and manage sensitive information such as API keys, passwords, connection strings, certificates, and other secrets. Key Vault Secrets provide a centralized and secure repository for storing and accessing these sensitive pieces of data.

In Dynamics 365, storing sensitive information like secrets in environment variables is a common practice to secure application configuration. However, it is essential to manage and secure these environment variables properly, ensuring that they are not exposed inadvertently. Azure Key Vault can be integrated with applications to securely retrieve and manage secrets, providing an additional layer of security for sensitive information.

How does the new Azure RBAC affect my organization?

If you have 3rd party applications or automations such as MS Flow, they may be utilizing Key Vault Secrets for access to an applicaton and they may start to see errors such as the following:

Granting Key Vault Secret access to applications/users

In Microsoft Azure, a new Key Vault Secrets User role is a built-in role that provides read access to secrets stored in Azure Key Vault. This role allows users or applications to retrieve secret values from the Key Vault.

To assign the Key Vault Secrets User role to an Azure resource, such as a user, service principal, or security group, you can follow these steps:

• Sign in to the Azure portal ( https://portal.azure.com ) using an account with the necessary permissions.
• Open the Azure Key Vault resource you want to manage.
• In the left-hand menu, click on “Access control (IAM)”.
• Click on the “+ Add” button to add a new role assignment.
• Role: Select “Key Vault Secrets User” from the role list.
• Assign access to: Choose the appropriate user, service principal, or security group that requires access to the Key Vault.
• Select: Leave it as the default value, which is the current subscription.
• Click on the “Save” button to add the role assignment.

If you were previously using access control policies, you can follow these steps to migrate to an Azure role-based access control permission model.

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After assigning the Key Vault Secrets User role, the user or application will have the necessary permissions to retrieve secrets from the Key Vault using the Azure Key Vault SDK or Azure CLI commands. Make sure to properly configure and authenticate the application or user with the appropriate credentials to access the Key Vault.

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How to retrieve secret from Azure Key Vault from console application

I've studied the Azure Key Vault developer's guide , many lined resources and quite some questions here on SO but get a list of exceptions starting with Azure.Identity.CredentialUnavailableException still. All attempts from DefaultAzureCredential fail. Here are the two lines of code:

I cannot use the recommended 'managed identity for applications'. The application runs on a server in the context of a service account. Initially I was under the impression all the authentication details would be passed along fully transparently, as this is the case for other resources. I verified via Azure portal that the account has proper permissions to read the secret.

I hope this short description of the scenario allows someone to guide me in the right direction anyway. It feels like the stack trace and additional arbitrary information on hand do not contribute to finding a solution.

To summarize, what I want is to execute a console application on a remote machine with a service account that retrieves a secret from Azure Key Vault, so I do not have to put this secret in the source code or any kind of config file. I was able to create the secret and permit the user read access. I fail to authenticate to Key Vault in code though.

Cheers and Happy New Year to everyone!

• authentication
• console-application
• azure-keyvault

To retrieve the secret value, create an Azure AD/Microsoft Entra ID application:

To get the secret value, the application must have Key Vault Secrets User role :

Go to your Key vault -> Access control (IAM) -> Add -> Add role assignment -> Select Key Vault Secrets User -> Select members -> Select your application -> Review + assign

Now use the below code and the secret value will be retrieved successfully:

• If your key vault is configured as "Azure role-based access control" , then assign Key Vault Secrets User role to the application.
• If your key vault is configured as "Vault access policy" , then you have to create access policy selecting Secret permissions and assigning it to application.

• 2 Hats off Rukmini! Are you actually saying, there is no way to read the secret w/o registering an application in Azure and using the client secret generated for authentication? There is no way to authenticate with the user account executing the program? It feels like I'm going round in circles. With this approach, I replace the secret I stored safely in KV in the source code with the client secret to access the KV. Either way I keep having "passwords" in the code... –  Toby Commented Jan 5 at 10:44
• You can make use of interactive flows to user sign-in but even that needs Azure ad application –  Rukmini Commented Jan 5 at 10:48
• You can make use of ROPC flow which doesn't require passing secret but that is not recommended by Microsoft learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity-platform/v2-oauth-ropc –  Rukmini Commented Jan 5 at 10:50
• Thank you for the reminder @SPT. I'm still considering and studying the reply and getting it to work for me. –  Toby Commented Jan 8 at 8:31
• 1 I've just accepted the answer from Rukmini. It did not solve my problem but all the information provided are accurate and helpful. After all, Azure key vault might just not be the correct choice for an on-premise console app. –  Toby Commented Jan 31 at 8:41

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