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Securing Your Azure Infrastructure with Bicep: A Guide to Assigning Access Policies to KeyVault

Level: 200
Publishing date: 07-Feb-2023
Author: Catalin Popa

Bicep is a high-level language that allows developers to declare Azure infrastructure as code. One of the key benefits of using Bicep is the ability to manage access policies to KeyVault with ease. In this article, we'll take a look at some lessons learned from deploying access policies to KeyVault with Bicep.
Scenario:
In this scenario, we have a development environment where multiple developers need access to the Key Vault. However, each developer should only have access to the secrets they need to perform their job. To accomplish this, we will use Bicep to assign access policies to the Key Vault.
Lesson 1: Understanding Access Policies in Key Vault
Key Vault access policies define which operations a user, application, or service principal can perform on secrets, keys, and certificates. There are several predefined policies available in Key Vault, such as "get" and "list", but you can also create custom policies.

Lesson 2: Understanding Bicep
Bicep is a new language for writing Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates. It's designed to make it easier to write, understand, and maintain ARM templates. Bicep is similar to Terraform, but it's more focused on Azure resources.

Lesson 3: Assigning Access Policies in Bicep
To assign access policies to Key Vault with Bicep, we first need to create a Bicep file. In this file, we will define the Key Vault and the access policies.

Lesson 4: Deploying the Bicep File
Once we have created the Bicep file, we can deploy it using the Azure CLI. 

In this example, we have defined two access policies for two developers. The first developer (developer1@contoso.com) has "list" permissions for the secret "secret1" in resource group "ResourceGroup1", while the second developer (developer2@contoso.com) has "get" permissions for the secret "secret.
It is also important to note that when modifying access policies in KeyVault, it is necessary to redeploy the infrastructure as code for the changes to take effect. This is because Bicep only applies changes to the infrastructure that have been declared in the Bicep file.

In conclusion, assigning access policies to KeyVault with Bicep is a straightforward process that can help developers control who has access to sensitive information. However, when working with multiple resource groups, it's important to ensure that the correct policies are assigned to the correct KeyVault and resource group, and to redeploy the infrastructure as code for changes to take effect. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your infrastructure as code is secure and properly managed.

We hope you found this helpful!