Hierarchical User Management in Multi-Tenant Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
Multi-tenant data management systems face challenges in efficiently managing user assignments and security settings across hierarchical levels, leading to potential privilege escalations and unauthorized access.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a user management system that enforces hierarchical relationships for user assignment, supports single-sign-on (SSO) directories, and requires authentication parameter resets through parent tenant contexts, while allowing IP address whitelisting on a tenant-by-tenant basis to ensure secure access and resource management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a multi-tenant data management system allows flexible user assignment across tenants, then ease of operation is improved, but security and reliability deteriorate due to potential privilege escalations and unauthorized access
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments user management by implementing hierarchical tenant structures where users are assigned to specific tenants and subtenants. Each tenant operates in an isolated application context with defined boundaries, preventing cross-tenant privilege escalation while maintaining flexible user assignment within authorized scopes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary authentication mechanism that requires parent tenant context for authentication parameter resets. This intermediary layer mediates between users and the authentication system, ensuring that security-critical operations can only be performed through proper hierarchical authorization channels.
2Reliability
If the system enforces strict hierarchical access controls, then security is improved, but device complexity increases due to multiple hierarchical levels and context management
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a nested hierarchical structure where subtenants are contained within tenants, and each level has its own application context. This nesting approach organizes complexity in a structured manner, allowing the system to enforce strict access controls while managing complexity through clear hierarchical boundaries and scoped contexts.
Solution Approach 2:
Each tenant and subtenant operates with local quality through isolated application contexts. Security policies, authentication parameters, and user assignments are localized to specific hierarchical levels, allowing complex security rules to be applied locally without affecting the entire system, thereby managing overall complexity.
3Reliability
If authentication parameter resets are restricted to parent tenant contexts, then security is improved, but ease of operation worsens due to additional access requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies preliminary anti-action by preemptively restricting authentication parameter resets to parent tenant contexts. This prevents potential security breaches before they can occur by ensuring that only authorized parent tenants can reset authentication parameters for their subtenants, eliminating the risk of unauthorized resets while maintaining a clear authorization model.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and devices for data management are described. A data management system may receive an indication to create a set of subtenants of a tenant. A first set of user profiles are associated with the tenant and a second set of user profiles are associated with a parent tenant of the tenant. The system may assign a first subset of the first set of user profiles to a first subtenant and assign a second subset to a second subtenant. The first subset and the second subset exclude user profiles from the second set of user profiles that are non-overlapping with the first set of user profiles. The system may update metadata corresponding to the first set of user profiles and the second set of user profiles such that the first subset has access to the first subtenant for and the second subset has access to the second subtenant.