Kafka RBAC — role-based access control

The Conduktor RBAC (Role Based Access Control) system enables you to restrict access to resources and enforce permissions at User and Group granularity. This is a critical step in ensuring that you have control over your Apache Kafka data. With Conduktor RBAC, you can:

configure access to Conduktor services
configure global permissions across multiple clusters
administer permissions for Kafka resources (topics, consumer groups, clusters, subjects, connectors)

Assign permissions

You can assign two types of permissions:

services: view/manage Console services
resources: interact with Kafka resources

And you can assign those permissions to users or groups. To assign user/group permissions, open Console and go to Settings > Users or Groups, as required. Click … next to the user/group you want to modify. Here’s an example for a user:

If a user belongs to multiple groups, they will inherit all the permissions assigned to these groups. If they have restricted access to a topic but belong to a group that has full access, they will have full access to the topic.

Manage services permissions

You can restrict access to Conduktor Console services such as settings or left menu items (like certificates). For example, you may want to limit the number of users who can generate API keys. By default, you all users can:

access data masking policies
view Self-service

Manage resources permissions

The RBAC model is very granular and allows you to customize the permissions to Kafka resources based on your requirements:

Resource	Permissions
Topics	View config
Topics	Consume
Topics	Produce
Topics	Create
Topics	Delete
Topics	Empty
Topics	Add partitions
Topics	Manage metadata (labels and description)
Consumer groups	Viewer
Consumer groups	Reset
Consumer groups	Create
Consumer groups	Delete
Consumer groups	Manage metadata (labels)
Subjects	View
Subjects	Edit compatibility
Subjects	Create / Update
Subjects	Delete
Subjects	Manage metadata (labels)
Kafka connectors	View task and status
Kafka connectors	View config
Kafka connectors	Edit config
Kafka connectors	Deploy
Kafka connectors	Delete
Kafka connectors	Restart
Kafka connectors	Pause / Resume
Kafka connectors	Manage metadata (labels and description)
Clusters	View ACL
Clusters	Manage ACL
Clusters	View broker
Clusters	Edit broker
Clusters	Edit SR compatibility

All these permissions can be applied on one specific cluster, or all your clusters.

Prefixes

When you define a permission, you might want it to be applied to:

a specific topic, by typing my-topic for instance
all the topics, by using a wildcard *
a subset that starts with a certain prefix, by typing my-prefix-*

Here’s an example of those three cases in Console:

Govern who can edit labels and descriptions

By default, anyone who can view a Kafka resource can also edit its labels and, for topics, its description. Because labels and descriptions can carry governance metadata, you may want to restrict who can change them. Metadata governance is an opt-in behavior that gates label and description editing on a dedicated permission, separate from the permission to view or edit the resource itself. It’s off by default, so existing deployments keep their current behavior until you turn it on.

Permissions and behavior

Metadata governance adds one Manage metadata permission per resource type. The permission covers labels for all four resource types, and also covers the description for topics and connectors (the two resources with an editable description).

Resource	Manage metadata permission	Permission enforced when governance is off	Permission enforced when governance is on
Topic	`topicMetadataManage` (labels and description)	View config	`topicMetadataManage`
Subject	`subjectMetadataManage` (labels)	Create / Update	`subjectMetadataManage`
Connector	`kafkaConnectorMetadataManage` (labels and description)	Edit config	`kafkaConnectorMetadataManage`
Consumer group	`consumerGroupMetadataManage` (labels)	Create	`consumerGroupMetadataManage`

This only changes the dedicated label and description endpoints. Setting labels or a description as part of a full resource create or update still uses the resource’s existing edit permission. When governance is on and a user lacks the Manage metadata permission, the Console UI hides the label and description edit controls for that resource. Existing labels and descriptions stay visible as read-only.

Enable metadata governance

Set the enable_metadata_governance property (environment variable CDK_ENABLE_METADATA_GOVERNANCE) to true. See the Console properties reference.

enable_metadata_governance: true

Turning on metadata governance changes who can edit labels and descriptions. Grant the Manage metadata permissions before you enable it, so the right users keep their access. See the migration guidance below.

Grant the Manage metadata permissions

You can grant each Manage metadata permission like any other resource permission — directly to a user, to a group, or through the API, CLI, or Terraform. For example, in a Group resource:

apiVersion: v2
kind: Group
metadata:
  name: topic-governance
spec:
  displayName: Topic governance
  permissions:
    - resourceType: TOPIC
      cluster: "*"
      patternType: PREFIXED
      name: ""
      permissions:
        - topicMetadataManage

Application owner groups receive the matching permission for every resource type automatically. New applications get it when their owner group is created, and Conduktor backfills existing owner groups when you upgrade — so application owners keep their label and description edit access when you enable governance.

Migration guidance

When you enable metadata governance, who can edit labels and descriptions changes:

Keeps access: application owners (through their owner group), and any user or group that holds the resource’s Manage metadata permission. Users with a full-access permission set on the resource type already hold it.
Loses access: users who could edit labels or descriptions only because they could view or partially edit the resource, without the Manage metadata permission.

To avoid disruption, grant the Manage metadata permissions to the relevant users and groups first, then enable governance.

Quick select

To save time during the permissions creation, you can use the Quick select to give a default set of permissions or set this up using the CLI, API or Terraform.

User permissions example

Here’s an example of a set of permissions given to Alice:

We can see that this is a recap of all the permissions this user has. In grey, we have the permissions Alice inherits from the group Project A, from the application support-for-tracker and in white the ones that are assigned to her directly. This set of permissions gives her:

Full access to the topic alice-private-topic on the cluster test
Full access on all topics, that start with the prefix app-a-, across all clusters and that she inherits this from the group Project A
Partial access to the topic tracker-click-1 and tracker-click-2 on the cluster Cluster-A and that she inherits this from the application support-for-tracker

Conduktor in production

Deploy Console

Deploy Schema Registry Proxy

Deploy Gateway

Initial setup

Kafka RBAC — role-based access control

Assign permissions

Manage services permissions

Manage resources permissions

Prefixes

Govern who can edit labels and descriptions

Permissions and behavior

Enable metadata governance

Grant the Manage metadata permissions

Migration guidance

Quick select

User permissions example

​Assign permissions

​Manage services permissions

​Manage resources permissions

​Prefixes

​Govern who can edit labels and descriptions

​Permissions and behavior

​Enable metadata governance

​Grant the Manage metadata permissions

​Migration guidance

​Quick select

​User permissions example

​Related resources

Assign permissions

Manage services permissions

Manage resources permissions

Prefixes

Govern who can edit labels and descriptions

Permissions and behavior

Enable metadata governance

Grant the Manage metadata permissions

Migration guidance

Quick select

User permissions example

Related resources