GCP Identity Management — Workforce or Workload?

In Google Cloud, it may be confusing at times to distinguish between similar-sounding services related to identity. However, they do serve very different needs…

GCP Workforce Identity: Streamlining Access for Internal Workloads

GCP Workforce Identity is designed to streamline access to GCP resources for workloads running within the GCP organization. It seamlessly integrates with the existing IAM infrastructure, leveraging Google’s strong authentication and authorization mechanisms. By leveraging IAM policies, workloads can be granted granular access to the resources they require, ensuring compliance with security policies and minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.

Key Features:

• Integrates with GCP’s existing IAM infrastructure
• Provides fine-grained access control for workloads
• Supports identity federation for workloads running on other clouds

Workload Identity Federation: Securely Accessing GCP from External Environments

Workload Identity Federation caters to workloads running outside of GCP, enabling them to securely access GCP resources. It achieves this by leveraging Identity Providers (IdPs), such as AWS IAM, Microsoft Azure AD, or OpenID Connect (OIDC) providers. These IdPs authenticate users and their workloads, issuing temporary credentials that can be used to access GCP resources. This eliminates the need for workload-specific service account keys, enhancing security and reducing the risk of key exposure.

Key Features:

• Replaces the need for service account keys for external workloads
• Eases the management of access permissions for external workloads
• Improves security by leveraging IDps for authentication

GKE Workload Identity (Addon): Seamless Access for GKE Workloads

GKE Workload Identity, specifically designed for workloads running on GKE nodes, ensures that these workloads have the necessary permissions to access Google Cloud resources. It utilizes the metadata server on GKE nodes to securely retrieve service account credentials, eliminating the need for workload-specific service account keys. This simplifies access management for GKE deployments, reducing operational overhead and streamlining the overall security posture.

Key Features:

• Eliminates the need for workload-specific service account keys
• Simplifies access management for workloads running on GKE
• Improves scalability and flexibility of GKE deployments

Choosing the Right IAM Solution for Your Needs

The choice between GCP Workforce Identity, Workload Identity Federation, and GKE Workload Identity depends on the specific requirements of your organization. If your goal is to streamline access to GCP resources for workloads within your organization, GCP Workforce Identity is a suitable choice. If you need to enable external applications to access Google Cloud resources securely, Workload Identity Federation is the recommended option. And if you want to simplify access management for workloads running on GKE, GKE Workload Identity is the best choice.

References

• GCP Workforce Identity: https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/workforce-identity-federation
• Workload Identity Federation: https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/workload-identity-federation
• GKE Workload Identity: https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/workload-identity