How do you handle access control and permissions on GitHub or GitLab for your cloud development team?

Permissions and access control on GitHub and GitLab provide efficient management of your cloud development team. You may choose several roles on GitHub, such as owner, maintainer, member, and visitor, each of which has particular rights for organizations and repositories. External collaborators with read, write, or admin access can be invited. Use branch protection rules to limit who is able to push or merge modifications for increased security. GitLab offers granular permission levels as well, which makes cooperation secure and well-organized while guaranteeing appropriate access control across projects.

Managing access control and permissions for your cloud development team on GitHub or GitLab is crucial for maintaining security and collaboration. GitHub : Create Teams Repository Access Organization Level Access Protected Branches Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) GitLab: Create Groups Project Permissions Group Access Protected Branches Instance-level Permissions

Taming the GitHub Frontier: Roles: Sheriff (Owner), Deputy (Maintainer), Rancher (Member), Guest (Peon). Each gets specific permissions like write access, pull requests, or just peeking. Teams: Corral your cowboys! Group members by project or responsibility, simplifying permission assignments. Branch Protection: Secure the bank! Enforce pull request approvals, code reviews, and status checks before any code change gets merged. Real-Life Example: "Our startup used GitHub access control to grant developers write access to their assigned features, restricting others to read-only. This fostered ownership while preventing accidental code conflicts."

With my experience in both, I can say that permission levels and access control mechanisms slightly differ in GitLab and GitHub. GitLab gives more control over permissions and access at both the project and group levels, including detailed settings for branch ownership and 'specific actions' within the CI/CD pipelines. Whereas, GitHub focuses on a team-based approach within organizations to manage permissions, focusing on branch protection rules and integrating access controls with GitHub Actions for workflow management. Choosing between GitLab and GitHub depends on project: GitLab for detailed CI/CD and permissions in complex projects, GitHub for streamlined CI/CD and team access in usually simpler applications.

To manage access control on GitHub and GitLab, I define permissions using roles and groups to ensure proper access to projects and repositories. I use two-factor authentication for added security and set up code owners to review key files. Regular audits maintain visibility and control.

Building Your GitLab Fort: Roles: Similar to GitHub, but with finer granularity, like Developer with deploy access or Reporter with issue tracking privileges. Groups & Subgroups: Organize your posse! Nest smaller groups within larger ones for project-specific permissions. Protected Environments: Secure the saloon! Limit deployments to specific environments based on roles, ensuring only authorized changes reach production. Real-Life Example: "Our agency used GitLab to grant limited access to external contractors for bug fixing, while keeping core development under internal control. This ensured collaboration while protecting sensitive code."

Further enhance GitLab's security by utilizing Protected Branches to limit who can push and merge, ensuring critical branches like 'master' and 'release' are safeguarded from unauthorized changes. Set up audit events to track and review changes made by users across all projects, providing transparency and accountability. For sensitive projects, consider enabling "Require DevOps Scorecards" to assess risk before merging. Regularly review and update access permissions to align with changes in team roles and responsibilities, ensuring that only relevant personnel have appropriate access levels.

GitLab access control and permissions offer five levels: Owners have full control, Maintainers manage projects, Developers and Reporters can read and write, and Guests have limited access. You can invite outside collaborators with specific permissions and require merge request approvals for certain branches.

GitHub vs. GitLab Access Control: Similarities: Both offer similar role-based control, teams, and branch protection. Differences: GitLab offers finer-grained roles, nested groups, and stricter deployment control. GitHub excels in social features and external developer integrations.

Best Practices for a Secure Saloon: Least Privilege: Give cowboys only the tools they need for their job. Regular Reviews: Audit and update permissions as roles and projects evolve. Documentation: Create clear guides on access levels and best practices.

GitHub offers finer control over branch protection rules and a user-friendly interface for managing outside collaborators. GitLab provides a more flexible system for merge request approvals and offers a comprehensive view of user and group permissions. Depending on your needs, you may prefer GitHub for detailed branch protection and collaboration management or GitLab for flexible merge request approvals and detailed permissions management.

When choosing between GitHub and GitLab, consider GitHub's integration capabilities with third-party tools and its robust ecosystem that may offer enhanced workflows, especially for open-source projects. GitLab, on the other hand, provides a more integrated CI/CD pipeline within the platform itself, which can streamline development processes for teams focused on continuous delivery. Additionally, GitLab's in-depth analytics and project management tools provide valuable insights for larger teams managing complex projects. Ultimately, the choice depends on specific project needs, team size, and desired workflow efficiencies.

Whenever it is available, create and use "user groups" for permissions, rather than assigning to individuals. This best practice is well known in other Role Based Authorization Control systems, but frequently forgotten in Source Control Systems. With the advent of GitOps it is important to know that the permissions available in your source control platform allow for high levels of deployment access in environments - even production. The ability to merge code becomes the ability to run infrastructure as code. Care should be taken on the source control management side and the cloud permissions that they are wired to should be least privilege for the purpose of updating individual applications instead of broad or admin permissions.

When setting up access control and permissions on GitHub or GitLab, remember these key practices: Least Privilege: Grant only the necessary permissions to each user or group. Regular Reviews: Periodically review and update permissions as needed. Code Management: Use branches and pull requests for code changes, with reviews before merging. Security Measures: Implement encryption, authentication, and authorization tools for protection.

Benefits of a Secure Town: Reduced Errors: Fewer accidental or malicious code changes. Improved Collaboration: Clear roles foster ownership and accountability. Enhanced Compliance: Meet industry regulations and security standards.

If your company's code is consider proprietary or trade secrets, it is important to understand the abilities of your system to create least privileged permissions for the various development and operations teams that will be managing your code in the system. It can also be helpful to host your own private Git system instance to maintain complete isolation by default. GitLab runner provides three different authentication mechanisms into cloud resources. The first is Cloud Keys, the second it running the runner inside a cloud and assigning an IAM role to the compute itself and the third is Open ID Federation and OIDC/JWT - which provides the most configurable and granular access of general runners into many cloud accounts.

Access control and permissions play a vital role in cloud development teams, offering various benefits. Firstly, they enhance security by limiting access to sensitive resources, reducing the risk of unauthorized entry and data breaches. Secondly, by assigning specific permissions, they promote smoother collaboration among team members, allowing them to focus on their tasks without interference. This streamlined approach not only improves efficiency but also ensures that the development and review processes are conducted in an organized manner. Additionally, access controls facilitate monitoring of user activities, enabling performance evaluation and compliance monitoring.

An important consideration with GitLab is what can be done with user groups after they are created. They can be added to Merge Approval Rules, Security Policy Merge Approval Rules, CODEOWNERS, Protected Branches, Protected Tags, Deployment Approvers and Allowed to Deploy configurations.

Security Scanning Integration: Integrate security scanning tools into your CI/CD pipelines to automatically identify and remediate security vulnerabilities in code repositories. This helps to proactively address security issues and maintain the integrity of your applications. Regular Access Reviews: Conduct regular access reviews to ensure that permissions granted to team members are still relevant and necessary. Periodically review user access rights and adjust permissions based on changes in team composition or project requirements. This helps mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and maintain least privilege access.