Setting Up Power BI Row Level Security

Keeping your data secure and allowing the proper access to users, inside and outside of your organization, within Power BI is high on everyone’s priority list. What do you know about row level security? Row level security (RLS) with Power BI can be used to restrict data access for given users. Filters restrict data access at the row level, and you can define filters within roles.

If you’re interested in learning more about what row-level security is and how to set up this security model we’ve got the webinar for you. In a recent webinar, Devin Knight, walks you through setting up both simple and more complex scenarios for data level security in Power BI.

The webinar begins with an overview of what row level security is in Power BI (and what is it not). In a nutshell, row level security gives you the ability to restrict specific rows of data from being viewed by your report users. What if you have 100s or 1000s of users that you need to give access to; how do you make it scalable? Have no fear, Devin will discuss how to make your security model dynamic to handle high numbers of users.

The process to set up RLS in Power BI is basically a two-step process. You begin with creating a role in the Power BI Desktop (the Desktop is the only place that you can do this as of today) that will define how the rows within your data model should be restricted. Then you deploy that model to the Power BI Service, and you assign users to that role. Here is where you assign what individuals, or ideally groups, are allowed access to see the data that you’ve set up within those roles.

Much of the presentation is demo heavy starting with a demo of setting up basic row level security to secure your data. The downside of this basic level is it’s not dynamic so it’s not ideal for 100s or 1000s of users but meant for if you have just a handful of situations where people need their data secured. Devin will discuss any issues with basic row level security.

The remainder of the webinar digs how dynamic row level security works and how to set it up. There are demos on setting up basic dynamic row level security, as well as with many to many, row level security with DAX and dealing with self-referencing tables.

So, if you need to learn more about row level security and how to set it up in Power BI, this webinar is for you. You can watch the complete webinar below and to view Devin’s slides from the presentation, click here.

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