Without native public access, teams usually model each user separately or create a special catch-all subject type. Both approaches increase schema complexity, make permission changes harder to manage, and can create operational drag as the number of identities grows. The result is a system that is less maintainable and more error-prone.
What breaks in the permission model
When a permissions system has no native public access, it loses a first-class way to represent “anyone can read this.” That forces the model to encode openness indirectly, usually by enumerating principals or introducing a synthetic subject that stands in for the public. The permission layer becomes less expressive, and the schema starts carrying business logic it was not designed to hold.
This is more than a cosmetic limitation. Public access is a distinct authorization state, so when the system cannot express it cleanly, teams compensate with workarounds that are harder to reason about, audit, and change. In practice, that means the model no longer matches the actual access policy, which is where maintenance debt begins.
Why the workaround gets expensive
The first workaround is per-user modeling, where every readable object must be granted to each intended consumer individually or through a large set of derived memberships. That creates large policy surfaces, increases the number of records that must be updated when access changes, and makes it easy for permissions to drift away from intent.
The second workaround is a catch-all subject type, such as a pseudo-public group or anonymous principal. That reduces the immediate explosion in rows, but it introduces ambiguity: the system must now distinguish real identities from the special subject, keep inheritance rules consistent, and prevent the catch-all from accidentally becoming a broader access path than intended.
- Schema complexity increases because the model needs extra subject types, exceptions, or inheritance rules.
- Change management gets harder because one policy change may require many updates or a risky rewrite of the public-access pattern.
- Error rates rise because maintainers must remember which objects use the workaround and which still rely on explicit principals.
For the underlying design problem, a native public-access primitive is often the cleaner control boundary, because the absence of that primitive shifts effort from authorization policy into data modeling and operational upkeep. That is exactly the kind of hidden cost that becomes visible only when the identity set grows.
Operational consequences and practitioner guidance
At scale, the biggest breakage is not that access becomes impossible, but that the permission system becomes fragile. Reviewers have to interpret indirect representations, tooling has to special-case anonymous visibility, and automation has fewer reliable invariants. The result is slower permission changes, more brittle migrations, and more opportunities for accidental overexposure or accidental lockout.
For teams designing or selecting a system, the key question is whether public read access is a real business state in the product. If it is, the permission model should represent it directly rather than forcing it through user lists or synthetic identities. If the system cannot do that, treat public access as a structural requirement, not a minor configuration gap. See the broader Ultimate Guide to NHIs for how permission sprawl and visibility gaps grow when access models become overly indirect, and compare that with the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 for the same maintainability and privilege-management pressures in identity-heavy systems.
Practitioner takeaway: A permissions model that cannot express public access directly tends to push simplicity out of the access layer and into brittle workarounds, so the real design test is whether policy changes remain clear, bounded, and easy to audit as the system grows.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while CIS Controls v8 and NIST CSF 2.0 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| CIS Controls v8 | 6 — Access Control Management | Public-access workarounds affect how access is granted and changed. |
| 5 — Account Management | Per-user modeling turns a simple public state into large account-level maintenance. | |
| Recommendation — Standardise access changes so public and non-public permissions remain reviewable and bounded. Reduce account-level permission sprawl by keeping access states explicit and manageable. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC — Identity Management, Authentication, and Access Control | The question is about how access is represented and enforced in the model. |
| Recommendation — Define access states clearly so policy decisions stay consistent as identities scale. | ||
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-02 — Secrets and Credential Management | Indirect access patterns often increase operational complexity around identities and credentials. |
| NHI-04 — Authorization and Least Privilege | The issue is a permission design that makes authorization harder to express and review. | |
| Recommendation — Keep access primitives simple so downstream credential and permission handling stays controllable. Model public access explicitly so authorization rules remain least-privilege and auditable. | ||
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- What breaks when a SaaS application relies on coarse role-based access control for complex permissions?
- What breaks when user access reviews are not performed regularly in credit union environments?
- How should security teams run Google Cloud access reviews when roles and permissions change frequently?
- How should security teams run user access reviews for Okta roles to reduce excessive permissions and dormant access?
