Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. Pair that with our core belief that security is something that should be accessible to everyone and the outcome is a better and safer Internet for all. Previously, our FREE and PAYGO customers didn’t have the flexibility to give someone control of just part of their account, they had to give access to everything.

Starting today, role based access controls (RBAC), and all of our additional roles will be rolled out to users on every plan! Whether you are a small business or even a single user, you can ensure that you can add users only to parts of Cloudflare you deem appropriate.

Why should I limit access?

It is good practice with security in general to limit access to what a team member needs to do a job. Restricting access limits the overall threat surface if a given user was compromised, and ensures that you limit the surface that mistakes can be made.

If a malicious user was able to gain access to an account, but it only had read access, you’ll find yourself with less of a headache than someone who had administrative access, and could change how your site operates. Likewise, you can prevent users outside their role from accidentally making changes to critical features like firewall or DNS configuration.

What are roles?

Roles are a grouping of permissions that make sense together. At Cloudflare, this means grouping permissions together by access to a product suite.

Cloudflare is a critical piece of infrastructure for customers, and roles ensure that you can give your team the access they need, scoped to what they’ll do, and which products they interact with.

Once enabled for Role Based Access Controls, by going to “Manage Account” and “Members” in the left sidebar, you’ll have the following list of roles available, which each grant access to disparate subsets of the Cloudflare offering.

If you find yourself on a team that is growing, you may want to grant firewall and DNS access to a delegated network admin, billing access to your bookkeeper, and Workers access to your developer.

Each of these roles provides specific access to a portion of your Cloudflare account, scoping them to the appropriate set of products. Even Super Administrator is now available, allowing you to provide this access to somebody without handing over your password and 2FA.

How to use our roles

The first step to using RBAC is an analysis and review of the duties and tasks of your team. When a team member primarily interacts with a specific part of the Cloudflare offering, start off by giving them only access to that part(s). Our roles are built in a way that allows multiple to be assigned to a single user, such that when they require more access, you can grant them an additional role.

Rollout

At this point in time, we will be rolling out RBAC over the next few weeks. When the roles become available in your account, head over to our documentation to learn about each of the roles in detail.