Manage role permissions and security in Azure Automation

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) enables access management for Azure resources. Using Azure RBAC, you can segregate duties within your team and grant only the amount of access to users, groups, and applications that they need to perform their jobs. You can grant role-based access to users using the Azure portal, Azure Command-Line tools, or Azure Management APIs.

Roles in Automation accounts

In Azure Automation, access is granted by assigning the appropriate Azure role to users, groups, and applications at the Automation account scope. Following are the built-in roles supported by an Automation account:

Role permissions

The following tables describe the specific permissions given to each role. This can include Actions, which give permissions, and Not Actions, which restrict them.

Owner

An Owner can manage everything, including access. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Contributor

A Contributor can manage everything except access. The following table shows the permissions granted and denied for the role:

Reader

A Reader can view all the resources in an Automation account but can't make any changes.

Automation Contributor

An Automation Contributor can manage all resources in the Automation account except access. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Automation Operator

An Automation Operator is able to create and manage jobs, and read runbook names and properties for all runbooks in an Automation account.

The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Automation Job Operator

An Automation Job Operator role is granted at the Automation account scope. This allows the operator permissions to create and manage jobs for all runbooks in the account. If the Job Operator role is granted read permissions on the resource group containing the Automation account, members of the role have the ability to start runbooks. However, they don't have the ability to create, edit, or delete them.

The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Automation Runbook Operator

An Automation Runbook Operator role is granted at the Runbook scope. An Automation Runbook Operator can view the runbook's name and properties. This role combined with the Automation Job Operator role enables the operator to also create and manage jobs for the runbook. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Log Analytics Contributor

A Log Analytics Contributor can read all monitoring data and edit monitoring settings. Editing monitoring settings includes adding the VM extension to VMs; reading storage account keys to be able to configure collection of logs from Azure Storage; creating and configuring Automation accounts; adding features; and configuring Azure diagnostics on all Azure resources. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Log Analytics Reader

A Log Analytics Reader can view and search all monitoring data as well as and view monitoring settings, including viewing the configuration of Azure diagnostics on all Azure resources. The following table shows the permissions granted or denied for the role:

Monitoring Contributor

A Monitoring Contributor can read all monitoring data and update monitoring settings. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Monitoring Reader

A Monitoring Reader can read all monitoring data. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

User Access Administrator

A User Access Administrator can manage user access to Azure resources. The following table shows the permissions granted for the role:

Reader role access permissions

The Built-in Reader role for the Automation Account can't use the API – GET /AUTOMATIONACCOUNTS/AGENTREGISTRATIONINFORMATION to fetch the Automation Account keys. This is a high privilege operation providing sensitive information that could pose a security risk of an unwanted malicious actor with low privileges who can get access to automation account keys and can perform actions with elevated privilege level.

To access the API – GET /AUTOMATIONACCOUNTS/AGENTREGISTRATIONINFORMATION, we recommend that you switch to the built-in roles like Owner, Contributor or Automation Contributor to access the Automation account keys. These roles, by default, will have the listKeys permission. As a best practice, we recommend that you create a custom role with limited permissions to access the Automation account keys. For a custom role, you need to add Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/listKeys/action permission to the role definition. Learn more about how to create custom role from the Azure portal.

Feature setup permissions

The following sections describe the minimum required permissions needed for enabling the Update Management and Change Tracking and Inventory features.

Permissions for enabling Update Management and Change Tracking and Inventory from a VM

¹ This permission is needed to enable features through the VM portal experience.

Permissions for enabling Update Management and Change Tracking and Inventory from an Automation account

Manage Role permissions for Hybrid Worker Groups and Hybrid Workers

You can create Azure custom roles in Automation and grant the following permissions to Hybrid Worker Groups and Hybrid Workers:

• Extension-based Hybrid Runbook Worker
• Agent-based Windows Hybrid Runbook Worker
• Agent-based Linux Hybrid Runbook Worker

Update Management permissions

Update Management can be used to assess and schedule update deployments to machines in multiple subscriptions in the same Microsoft Entra tenant, or across tenants using Azure Lighthouse. The following table lists the permissions needed to manage update deployments.

Configure Azure RBAC for your Automation account

The following section shows you how to configure Azure RBAC on your Automation account through the Azure portal and PowerShell.

Configure Azure RBAC using the Azure portal

1. Sign in to the Azure portal and open your Automation account from the Automation Accounts page.

2. Select Access control (IAM) and select a role from the list of available roles. You can choose any of the available built-in roles that an Automation account supports or any custom role you might have defined. Assign the role to a user to which you want to give permissions.

   For detailed steps, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

   Note

   You can only set role-based access control at the Automation account scope and not at any resource below the Automation account.

Remove role assignments from a user

You can remove the access permission for a user who isn't managing the Automation account, or who no longer works for the organization. The following steps show how to remove the role assignments from a user. For detailed steps, see Remove Azure role assignments:

1. Open Access control (IAM) at a scope, such as management group, subscription, resource group, or resource, where you want to remove access.

2. Select the Role assignments tab to view all the role assignments at this scope.

3. In the list of role assignments, add a checkmark next to the user with the role assignment you want to remove.

4. Select Remove.

   

Configure Azure RBAC using PowerShell

You can also configure role-based access to an Automation account using the following Azure PowerShell cmdlets:

Get-AzRoleDefinition lists all Azure roles that are available in Microsoft Entra ID. You can use this cmdlet with the Name parameter to list all the actions that a specific role can perform.

Get-AzRoleDefinition -Name 'Automation Operator'

The following is the example output:

Name             : Automation Operator
Id               : d3881f73-407a-4167-8283-e981cbba0404
IsCustom         : False
Description      : Automation Operators are able to start, stop, suspend, and resume jobs
Actions          : {Microsoft.Authorization/*/read, Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/jobs/read, Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/jobs/resume/action,
                   Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/jobs/stop/action...}
NotActions       : {}
AssignableScopes : {/}

Get-AzRoleAssignment lists Azure role assignments at the specified scope. Without any parameters, this cmdlet returns all the role assignments made under the subscription. Use the ExpandPrincipalGroups parameter to list access assignments for the specified user, as well as the groups that the user belongs to.

Example: Use the following cmdlet to list all the users and their roles within an Automation account.

Get-AzRoleAssignment -Scope '/subscriptions/<SubscriptionID>/resourcegroups/<Resource Group Name>/Providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/<Automation account name>'

The following is the example output:

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/myAutomationAccount/provid
                     ers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Scope              : /subscriptions/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/myAutomationAccount
DisplayName        : [email protected]
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Automation Operator
RoleDefinitionId   : d3881f73-407a-4167-8283-e981cbba0404
ObjectId           : aaaaaaaa-0000-1111-2222-bbbbbbbbbbbb
ObjectType         : User

Use New-AzRoleAssignment to assign access to users, groups, and applications to a particular scope.

Example: Use the following command to assign the "Automation Operator" role for a user in the Automation account scope.

New-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName <sign-in Id of a user you wish to grant access> -RoleDefinitionName 'Automation operator' -Scope '/subscriptions/<SubscriptionID>/resourcegroups/<Resource Group Name>/Providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/<Automation account name>'

The following is the example output:

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/resourcegroups/myResourceGroup/Providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/myAutomationAccount/provid
                     ers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Scope              : /subscriptions/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/resourcegroups/myResourceGroup/Providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/myAutomationAccount
DisplayName        : [email protected]
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Automation Operator
RoleDefinitionId   : d3881f73-407a-4167-8283-e981cbba0404
ObjectId           : bbbbbbbb-1111-2222-3333-cccccccccccc
ObjectType         : User

Use Remove-AzRoleAssignment to remove access of a specified user, group, or application from a particular scope.

Example: Use the following command to remove the user from the Automation Operator role in the Automation account scope.

Remove-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName <sign-in Id of a user you wish to remove> -RoleDefinitionName 'Automation Operator' -Scope '/subscriptions/<SubscriptionID>/resourcegroups/<Resource Group Name>/Providers/Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/<Automation account name>'

In the preceding example, replace sign-in ID of a user you wish to remove, SubscriptionID, Resource Group Name, and Automation account name with your account details. Choose yes when prompted to confirm before continuing to remove user role assignments.

User experience for Automation Operator role - Automation account

When a user assigned to the Automation Operator role on the Automation account scope views the Automation account to which he/she is assigned, the user can only view the list of runbooks, runbook jobs, and schedules created in the Automation account. This user can't view the definitions of these items. The user can start, stop, suspend, resume, or schedule the runbook job. However, the user doesn't have access to other Automation resources, such as configurations, Hybrid Runbook Worker groups, or DSC nodes.

Configure Azure RBAC for runbooks

Azure Automation allows you to assign Azure roles to specific runbooks. To do this, run the following script to add a user to a specific runbook. An Automation Account Administrator or a Tenant Administrator can run this script.

$rgName = "<Resource Group Name>" # Resource Group name for the Automation account
$automationAccountName ="<Automation account name>" # Name of the Automation account
$rbName = "<Name of Runbook>" # Name of the runbook
$userId = "<User ObjectId>" # Azure Active Directory (AAD) user's ObjectId from the directory

# Gets the Automation account resource
$aa = Get-AzResource -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType "Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts" -ResourceName $automationAccountName

# Get the Runbook resource
$rb = Get-AzResource -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType "Microsoft.Automation/automationAccounts/runbooks" -ResourceName "$rbName"

# The Automation Job Operator role only needs to be run once per user.
New-AzRoleAssignment -ObjectId $userId -RoleDefinitionName "Automation Job Operator" -Scope $aa.ResourceId

# Adds the user to the Automation Runbook Operator role to the Runbook scope
New-AzRoleAssignment -ObjectId $userId -RoleDefinitionName "Automation Runbook Operator" -Scope $rb.ResourceId

Once the script has run, have the user sign in to the Azure portal and select All Resources. In the list, the user can see the runbook for which he/she has been added as an Automation Runbook Operator.

User experience for Automation operator role - Runbook

When a user assigned to the Automation Operator role on the Runbook scope views an assigned runbook, the user can only start the runbook and view the runbook jobs.

Next steps

• To learn about security guidelines, see Security best practices in Azure Automation.
• To find out more about Azure RBAC using PowerShell, see Add or remove Azure role assignments using Azure PowerShell.
• For details of the types of runbooks, see Azure Automation runbook types.
• To start a runbook, see Start a runbook in Azure Automation.