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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
7 years ago

PBIS Data Security for Higher Education

At our university, we are preparing to implement Power BI, preferably Power BI Service, and are looking at cloud security. In the absence of a HECVAT form from Microsoft on Power BI, we are looking to the community in hopes of hearing from other higher ed institutions that have implemented Power BI Service. 
 
What did your institution do in terms of evaluating Power BI Service's security, particularly around securing student data? What risks have you chosen to accept, and for what reasons?
 
Any lessons learned or considerations you're willing to share would be most appreciated,
 
Rachel Groenhout
Need Help

3 Replies

  • v-xicai's avatar
    v-xicai
    Icon for Community Support rankCommunity Support
    7 years ago

    Hi Anonymous ,

     

    You can use RLS feature, Row-level security (RLS) with Power BI can be used to restrict data access for given users. You can define roles and rules within Power BI Desktop. When you publish to Power BI, it also publishes the role definitions. See more detail: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-admin-rls#manage-security-on-your-model.

     

    In addition, if you publish your Power BI Desktop report to an app workspace within the Power BI service, the roles will be applied to read-only members. If you have configured the app workspace so that members have edit permissions, the RLS roles will not be applied to them. Users will be able to see all of the data.

     

    Following is a list of the current limitations for row-level security on cloud models.

    • If you previously defined roles and rules in the Power BI service, you must re-create them in Power BI Desktop.
    • You can define RLS only on the datasets created with Power BI Desktop. If you want to enable RLS for datasets created with Excel, you must convert your files into Power BI Desktop (PBIX) files first. Learn more
    • Only ETL and DirectQuery connections are supported. Live connections to Analysis Services are handled in the on-premises model.
    • Cortana is not supported with RLS at this time.

     

    If you need to set RLS, please see the link Power BI Desktop Dynamic security cheat sheet, which described the detailed steps. Maybe it doesn't work, there are some tips to let it work and test it efficiently. You can also refer to this case .

     

    Best Regards,

    Amy

     

    If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

     

  • v-xicai's avatar
    v-xicai
    Icon for Community Support rankCommunity Support
    7 years ago

    Hi  Anonymous ,

     

    Does that make sense? If so, kindly mark my answer as a solution to help others having the similar issue and close the case. If not, let me know and I'll try to help you further.

     

    Best regards

    Amy

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      7 years ago

      Thank you, Amy. Your information is helpful, but what we are really looking for is information on how others have ensured the security of their data across the board rather than how to restrict access to given data points by given users. Thank you for responding. We are still interested in hearing from other organizations (preferably institutions of higher education) regarding their review process. Many thanks!