Authentication and authorization best practices

Follow these security best practices to protect your GitLab instance and maintain proper access controls. These recommendations help you maintain secure access without limiting productivity across your organization.

Security principles

Establish fundamental security principles that form the foundation of your access control strategy.

Principle of least privilege

This principle reduces security risks by limiting potential damage from compromised accounts or insider threats.

• Grant users the minimum permissions necessary to complete their work.
• Assign minimum roles (Minimal Access or Guest) at the top-level group, then grant higher permissions only in specific subgroups and projects where needed.
• Minimize the number of Owners and Maintainers by implementing custom roles that restrict access to sensitive settings.
• When creating tokens, use the most limited scope possible or create multiple tokens with different scopes for specific purposes.

Hierarchical permission management

Organize permissions to match your organizational structure and reduce administrative overhead.

• Apply group membership permissions rather than project membership permissions when possible to reduce administrative overhead.
• Create a single top-level group for your organization to enable centralized access control and reporting.
• Organize your group hierarchy to match your organizational structure with clear ownership boundaries.