Walkthrough: Creating a role for help desk with limited access.

In a recent infrastructure audit for a client utilizing BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access (PRA), a recurring operational inefficiency was identified: the default administrative roles were too permissive for Level 1 help desk personnel, creating an unacceptable risk surface and complicating compliance reporting. The requirement was to construct a narrowly scoped role that grants the ability to manage active sessions—specifically for disconnection—without permitting access to credential vaults, system management, or audit logs. This walkthrough details the procedural and conceptual steps to implement such a role, focusing on the principle of least privilege as applied within the BeyondTrust PRA web interface.

The initial step involves navigating to the `Roles & Permissions` section under `Administration`. A new role is created, for which I have adopted the naming convention `Help Desk - Session Monitor`. The critical phase is the meticulous configuration of permissions across several tabs. Below is a representative subset of the permissions configuration, which is inherently granular. It is paramount to deny all permissions by default and explicitly enable only the necessary ones.

```
Role: Help Desk - Session Monitor

Permissions Tab:
- View Access: Deny
- Edit Access: Deny
- Delete Access: Deny
- Manage Sessions: Allow (This is the core permission)
- Manage Account Mapping: Deny
- Approve Requests: Deny
- Manage Policies: Deny

Session Control Tab:
- Disconnect Session: Allow
- View Session: Allow
- Take Control of Session: Deny
- Terminate Process: Deny
- Lock Screen: Deny

Target Systems & Groups Tab:
- Assign specific managed system groups that are within the help desk's support scope. This is not a permission but a scope restriction. Without assignment here, the role holder sees no systems.
```

The assignment of managed systems or groups is a frequently overlooked but essential step. The `Manage Sessions` permission is global in a sense, but the subject can only act upon sessions for systems explicitly assigned to their role. This creates a two-layer security model: a permitted action and a defined resource scope. Furthermore, the role must be assigned to the appropriate user directory group, typically an Active Directory security group containing the help desk staff. The final validation step involves assuming a test user account with this role, confirming the interface presents only the `Sessions` view and that the disconnect function is available and operational for in-scope systems, while all administrative menus and vault interfaces are absent.

From an operational security and CI/CD perspective, while BeyondTrust's GUI facilitates this configuration, for environments requiring reproducibility or version control, one must investigate their REST API for potential codification of such roles. This would allow the role definition to be treated as infrastructure-as-code, stored in a Git repository, and applied via a pipeline during deployment phases to a staging or production PRA appliance, ensuring consistency and an audit trail of changes. However, the API's capability for full role replication should be verified against the specific PRA version in use.