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Chapter 1. Overview of the vulnerability service

The vulnerability service enables quick assessment and comprehensive monitoring of the exposure of your RHEL infrastructure to Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) so you can better understand your most critical issues and systems and effectively manage remediations.

1.1. Prerequisites
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  • Each system has the insights-client installed and registered to the Red Hat Lightspeed application. Follow the Getting Started with Red Hat Lightspeed guide to install the client and register your system(s).
  • The vulnerability service is fully supported for RHEL systems managed by Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM) and Satellite 6 and later. Using any other means to obtain package updates, other than Satellite 6 with RHSM or RHSM registered with subscription.redhat.com (Customer Portal), can lead to misleading results.
  • Vulnerability service remediations are not fully supported and may not work properly on Satellite 5 and Spacewalk-hosted RHEL systems.
  • Some features require special privileges provided by your organization administrator. Specifically, the ability to view Red Hat Security Advisories (RHSAs) associated with certain CVEs and systems, and to view and patch those vulnerabilities in the Red Hat Lightspeed patch service, requires permissions granted through user access.

1.2. How the vulnerability service works
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The vulnerability service uses the insights-client to gather information about your RHEL systems. The client gathers information about the systems and uploads it to the vulnerability service.

The vulnerability service then assesses the data against the Red Hat CVE database and security bulletins to determine if there are any outstanding CVEs that could affect the systems, and provides the results of those comparisons.

Once the data has been analyzed, you can view and sort the displayed results, assess the risks and priorities of the vulnerabilities, report their status, and create and deploy Ansible Playbooks to remediate them. The goal of the vulnerability service is to enable a repeatable process that protects against security weaknesses in your RHEL infrastructure.

Important

The vulnerability service shows all CVEs available for the major version of your RHEL system, even if the system has its release version locked to a specific minor release. To determine if the CVE was applied to the minor version of your RHEL system, in the Security Vulnerability Systems, locate your system. The Remediation type must be Manual.

Manage user permissions to control access to Red Hat Lightspeed applications. Use the User Access feature to apply role-based access control (RBAC). Red Hat provides predefined groups and a set of predefined roles to make it easier for Organization Administrators to assign, restrict, and remove user permissions to Red Hat Lightspeed.

1.3.1. User Access overview
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Understand how the role-based access control (RBAC) User Access feature of the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console manages user permissions through roles instead of individual user assignments. User Access simplifies permission management by assigning specific permissions to roles, which can then be assigned to user groups.

You can also create custom groups and roles to provide more fine-tuned control over specific features of Red Hat Lightspeed to suit the needs of your organization.

If you are an Organization Administrator, you can use the User Access feature under Identity & Access Management in the Hybrid Cloud Console to:

  • Control user permissions and organize roles.
  • Create groups that include roles and their corresponding permissions.
  • Assign users to these groups, allowing them to inherit the permissions associated with their group’s roles.

1.3.2. Predefined groups in User Access
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Understand the two predefined groups available in User Access: Default access and Default admin access. Create custom groups to align permissions with specific personas, job functions, or teams in your organization.

The Default access group
By default, the Default access group is assigned many granular predefined roles, such as Remediations viewer and Inventory Hosts viewer, so that group members have basic visibility. Because all users in your organization are members of the Default access group, they inherit all permissions assigned to that group. The Default access group is automatically updated by Red Hat.
Important

If your Organization Administrator modifies the Default access group, for example, by removing roles to restrict access to specific applications or to use the consolidated roles, the group is automatically renamed to Custom default access. Once converted, this group is no longer automatically updated by Red Hat.

The Default admin access group
The Default admin access group contains only users who have Organization Administrator permissions. This group is automatically maintained, and users and roles in this group cannot be changed.

The Default admin access group includes many (but not all) predefined roles that provide update and delete permissions. The roles in this group usually include administrator in their names.

1.3.3. Predefined roles assigned to groups
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Understand how predefined roles in Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console bundle permissions across multiple Red Hat Lightspeed applications to align with common user personas. Use predefined roles to reduce administrative effort, or create custom roles for more fine-tuned control over specific features.

The predefined roles are a starting point to help you to control and manage user permissions. You can then use these roles to create custom roles that are tailored to your specific use cases and organization. For example, you can use the predefined granular roles to create custom roles that provide more fine-tuned control over specific features of Red Hat Lightspeed.

By default, Red Hat provides a set of consolidated roles and a set of granular roles in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console User Access UI. The consolidated roles significantly reduce the administrative effort required to manage user permissions, while the granular roles provide more fine-tuned control over specific features of Red Hat Lightspeed.

You can use the predefined consolidated and granular roles in User Access simultaneously, but using consolidated roles can significantly reduce the administrative effort.

Select from the predefined consolidated roles library

The Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console provides three predefined, consolidated User Access roles to help you manage user permissions to Red Hat Lightspeed applications and services that run on registered Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. These roles help simplify how the Organization Administrator creates groups and permissions for various levels of access to the Red Hat Lightspeed services. If you want to reduce the administrative effort required to manage user permissions and your use case aligns with the permissions included in these roles, select from the consolidated roles library.

The consolidated roles are as follows:

RHEL viewer: The RHEL viewer role provides users visibility without the ability to make changes. It allows read-only access to Red Hat Lightspeed. You can view system configurations, compliance reports, inventory data, patch information, vulnerabilities, and overall resource states and activities. The only action permitted with this role is to generate activation keys.

RHEL operator: The RHEL operator role allows active management of your Red Hat Lightspeed environment. With this role, you can edit system configurations, inventory details, policies, and notification/integration settings. The RHEL operator role allows many of the RHEL administrator role functions, but it is restricted from editing compliance policies, content source templates, policies, or tasks. In addition, the RHEL operator role cannot execute remediation plans.

RHEL administrator: The RHEL administrator role provides comprehensive administrative privileges across your RHEL systems and Red Hat Lightspeed. With this role, you can manage system configurations, inventory, compliance policies, notifications, patch management, remediations, malware detection, and advisor recommendations. The role can also view and modify all vulnerability settings.

Important

To use the consolidated roles effectively, you might need to remove the granular RHEL roles from the Default access group to prevent permission conflicts. This action automatically changes the name of the predefined Default access group to Custom default access group, after which, it is no longer automatically updated by Red Hat.

See Predefined User Access roles for a list of the roles included in the Default admin access group and a reference table that lists most of the predefined groups and roles that are available in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console and the permissions included in each role.

Granular roles
The granular roles are specific roles for individual services that allow for fine-tuned control over specific features of Red Hat Lightspeed, for example, Inventory Hosts administrator or Compliance viewer. If you want to have more control over specific features of Red Hat Lightspeed and your use case does not align with the permissions included in the consolidated roles, use the granular predefined roles.
Tip

Across the Red Hat Lightspeed product documentation, the Prerequisites section for each procedure lists which predefined roles provide the permissions needed to use the features in that procedure. For example, if a procedure requires permissions to view and manage remediations, the Prerequisites section for that procedure lists the Remediations administrator or other valid role as a recommended predefined role to use for that procedure.

1.3.4. Check your permissions
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Verify your current permissions and the roles or groups assigned to you in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. Check your permissions to troubleshoot access issues or understand your level of access to Red Hat Lightspeed applications.

Note

Only users with the Organization Administrator role can view the permissions of other users in the User Access settings and manage user permissions to Red Hat Lightspeed services. For more information, see the Configure user permissions section.

Prerequisites

  • You are logged in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Procedure

  1. In the Hybrid Cloud Console, click the Settings icon (⚙), then navigate to My User Access.
  2. Optional: If you require additional permissions, use the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console Virtual Assistant to ask "Contact my Organization Administrator". The assistant sends an email to the Organization Administrator on your behalf.

Results

All of the applications that you have permissions to access are listed on this page and are grouped by product, for example, RHEL, OpenShift Container Platform, and Ansible Automation Platform.

You can also filter your permissions by application, for example, by advisor, cost management, inventory, and remediations.

1.3.5. Configure user permissions
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If you are an Organization Administrator, you can view and manage user permissions for all users in your organization. Control access to Red Hat Lightspeed and other Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console services through the User Access interface.

Important

If you are not an Organization Administrator, you will be unable to complete this task. However, you can check your own permissions for different applications by navigating to My User Access. Contact your Organization Administrator to request more permissions.

Prerequisites

  • You have logged in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console as an Organization Administrator, or you have the required administrator User Access role permissions.

Procedure

Results

From here, you can create and manage:

  • Roles to determine permissions to Red Hat Lightspeed services and features
  • Groups to include one or more roles to align with a specific persona, job function, or team in your organization
  • Users and their assignment to groups to inherit permissions from the roles assigned to those groups

Understand the predefined roles that control access to features of the vulnerability service in Red Hat Lightspeed. Use these role definitions to assign appropriate permissions to users based on their responsibilities.

The following roles enable enhanced access to vulnerability features:

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Table 1.1. Permissions provided by the User Access roles
User Access roleGrants permissions to …​Included in the Default access group

Vulnerability administrator

  • Do everything that a Vulnerability viewer can do.
  • Do any available operations against any vulnerability-service resource.
 

Vulnerability viewer

  • Read any vulnerability-service resource.

X

RHEL administrator

  • Do everything that a RHEL operator can do.
  • Administer RHEL system configs, inventory, compliance, notifications, patch management, execute remediation plans, malware detection, and advisor.
  • View and modify vulnerability settings.
 

RHEL operator

  • Do everything that a RHEL viewer can do.
  • Edit system configs, inventory, policies, notifications, and integrations.
  • View compliance reports, patch info, malware detections, and recommendations.
  • Create remediation plans, manage stale data, and change vulnerability settings.
Note

The RHEL operator role is restricted from editing compliance policies, content source templates, policies, or tasks. Also, the RHEL operator role cannot execute remediation plans.

 

RHEL viewer

  • Read all available data across Red Hat Lightspeed services and features.

    • View system configs, compliance reports, inventory data, patch info, vulnerabilities, and more to observe the state of resources or activities.
Note

Cannot perform actions other than generating activation keys.

 
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