Hiding and preventing users from using part of a WF of an App

[pierrebocq]

Hello,

I have a quite tricky problem. I have created an Analytic App which runs perfectly fine and does quite a wide range of things since it covers different tasks for a lot of different people in my organisation.

Firstly, for security reasons and secondly for clarity reasons I'd like to lock and hide this security part, there's info (things like passwords etc.) that shouldn't be disclosed because it would give access too much rights in one of our software so I want prevent users to use it.

Basically, what I want here is to not lock the whole WF so that users can see how it works and what it does without risking any leak of security rights.

What I was thinking about originally was to make a locked macro within the app containing the security part, but the user could just use its results to access certain things.

So what I would like to avoid locking the whole thing would be a locked part of the WF that can't be user anywhere else than in this specific App.

Anyone has an idea of how to do that ? Is it even possible ? Would appreciate any help.

Thank you in advance,
Pierre

[jdminton]

@pierrebocq have you tried using locking functionality? If you use this method, please save a version of your workflow unlocked for your use to edit. Once it's locked, it can only be run. https://help.alteryx.com/2021.4/LockYourWorkflow.htm 

[ArnaldoSandoval]

Hi @pierrebocq 

Indeed it is a tricky question, based on your initial post, it seems you are already familiar with Locking workflows and macros, which is fine, but they might not be the way to go as you are finding out.

Alteryx Designer is an ETL tool able to reach and load data from any resource the developer has access to (these could be data bases and file system folders); Alteryx Designer by itself does not have many security features to be applied to the data it is processing, by example, once we get the logic credentials to a database, we can load data from it with the only limitation the account was given by the DB Administrators, Alteryx has little to say; the same could be said about folders, when we develop workflows we load data (Excel, CSV, etc) from folders we can access, once again, Alteryx does not have commands to handle those access.

The previous paragraph give us an idea of the power and vulnerabilities Alteryx workflows have, its security model has little dependencies on the Alteryx Designer, although this change a little bit on the Gallery or Alteryx Server.

When we develop solutions with Alteryx Designer we must be aware of the security constraints the data incorporates into the workflow, it is not the same when we process HR, Finance, Customer, Products, etc; within each of these modules there are peculiar rules, by example Personal Information, some of our workflows process this sort of information, although, not everybody in the organization has the authority level to view or work with this data; here the developer, his team ans stakeholder must be on the same page, and enforce privacy rules on the data, perhaps the simplest of these rules are:

• The Alteryx workflows we develop use departamentalised accounts; one for HR, another for Payroll and so on.
• Certainly we can grant access to the resources of each department, e.g. HR, Payroll, etc to our account, although this practice is risky, as it could expose the data into the wrong team.
• The Alteryx Server help us to enforce the previous point, the server usually run the workflows under a service account, granting access to all the resources perhaps is not a good idea, once again, we should be aware of data privacy and the risk the output of our workflows find their way out of the corporate building.
• Alteryx Server feature Collections, Districts, Studios, etc to manage some of the security perculiarities, We could create a collection for HR and another for Payroll, assigning the users who can access them; workflows designed to run in the HR collection should not have access to Payroll data (by example).
• Alteryx Server allows us to publish workflows assigning login credentials, with this feature the "HR Manager" will be able to generate reports with data only available to him or her, 

If we disregard the security facilities available within Alteryx Designer and Alteryx Server, we may end with "super workflows" with access to too much data, "The workflow who knew too much" (like the movie).

Hope that my notes here help you to get a better understanding of some of the security challenges we face with Alteryx.

Arnaldo