How to Manage Authentication and Authorizations

Apply DataSHIELD Permissions

It is recommended to grant permissions by group, and then assign each user to the appropriate groups.

There are two kinds of permissions that need to be granted:

  • Permission to use the DataSHIELD service, defined globally

  • Permission to use data (table or resource) in the context of DataSHIELD, defined per table of per resource

Note that the DataSHIELD-compatible permissions (view dictionary and summary, without individual values access) are to be applied per table, whereas it is possible to apply similar permission (view, without resource credentials access) to any resource of a project in a single operation.

From Web Page

Note

As a system administrator:

  1. [optional] Group local users (if not already done): go to Administration > Users and Groups and edit users so that they belong to the relevant group

  2. [optional] Configure Identity Providers so that the users are automatically granted the appropriate group: go to Administration > Identity Providers and configure each ID provider (groups can be automatically applied or extracted from the received UserInfo).

  3. Grant group the permission to use the DataSHIELD service: go to Administration > DataSHIELD, Permissions section (bottom of the page)

As a system administrator or as a project administrator:

  • Grant group the permission to view dictionnary and summary (no access to individual values) of a Table: go to project’s table page, select the Permissions tab

  • Grant group the permission to view (no credentials) a Resource: go to the project’s resource page, select the Permissions tab

  • Grant group the permission to view (no credentials) any Resources of a project: go to the project’s resources list page, select the Permissions tab

Using R

Use the following opalr R functions to manage permissions:

The following example grants DataSHIELD permissions to projectA and projectB groups:

# load opal library
library(opalr)
# connect to the opal server
o <- opal.login(username = "administrator", password = 'password', url = 'https://opal-demo.obiba.org')

# create a user in a group, call output is the generated password
pwd <- oadmin.user_add(o, "foo", groups = c("projectA"))

# use DataSHIELD service
dsadmin.perm_add(o, subject = c("projectA", "projectB"), type = "group", permission = "use")

# single table
opal.table_perm_add(o, 'CNSIM', 'CNSIM1', c('projectA', 'projectB'), type = 'group', permission = 'view')

# each table of a project
lapply(opal.tables(o, "CNSIM")$name, function(table) {
  opal.table_perm_add(o, "CNSIM", table, subject = c("projectA", "projectB"), type = "group", permission = "view")
})

# single resource
opal.resource_perm_add(o, "RSRC", "CNSIM1", subject = c("projectA", "projectB"), type = "group", permission = "view")

# any resources of a project
opal.resources_perm_add(o, "RSRC", subject = c("projectA", "projectB"), type = "group", permission = "view")

opal.lgout(o)

Use Personal Access Token

As documented in the Two-factor Authentication documentation, the PAT is the recommended authentication strategy, as it has a limited scope (project access and operations), and is revocable. Its usage is mandatory when the user is authenticated externally (see Identity Providers documentation).

Create a PAT

From Profile Page

Note

  1. Go to My Profile page (press the username on the top right corner)

  2. Press Add Access Token and select a prepared token configuration (DataSHIELD, etc.) or a custom one

  3. Fill in the token form

  4. Copy the generated token and Save

Using R

Use the opal.token* functions to manage your PATs. More specifically, use the prepared token configurations opal.token_r_create(), opal.token_datashield_create(), or opal.token_sql_create().

# load opal library
library(opalr)
# connect to the opal server
o <- opal.login()

# the output of the call is the token
token <- opal.token_datashield_create(o, "test")

opal.logout(o)

Use the PAT

Replace in your R/DataSHIELD, or Python, scripts the username/password credentials by the token parameter.

In R

# load opal library
library(opalr)
# connect to the opal server with a token
o <- opal.login(token = "xxxxxxx", url = "https://opal.example.org")

# ...

In DataSHIELD

library(DSOpal)
library(dsBaseClient)
builder <- DSI::newDSLoginBuilder()
# connect to 'study1' with a token
builder$append(server = "study1",  url = "https://opal-demo.obiba.org",
               token = "xxxxxxxx")
logindata <- builder$build()
conns <- DSI::datashield.login(logins = logindata)

# ...

DataSHIELD and Central Authentication Service

In the DataSHIELD context, managing users is usually a pain for the infrastructure coordinator as each data node custodian must create a user, which takes time, and with potentially as many different passwords to keep safe.

An different setup is to use a Central Authentication Service (CAS), where users are registered once and properly configured (profiles/groups). Then each DataSHIELD Opal would connect to the CAS. Opal supports external Identity Providers using the standard OpenID Connect protocol.

The opalr R package does not currently support the OpenID dance (and it is anyway not appropriate for a scripting usage), then a user must login the Opal web interface of each node once, so that its user profile is validated and to create Two-factor Authentication that will be used in its DataSHIELD R scripts.