Roles define access control to database resources, such as keyspaces, tables, and functions. In order to secure your HCD database, you can create roles for users and applications using CQL. Roles are used to define a set of permissions that can be assigned to other roles and mapped to external users. Roles can also be used to create login accounts for CQL users.

The first role that you should set is the default superuser role. This role can be thought of as the root user in a Linux system. The superuser role has full access to all keyspaces and tables in the database. This role is defined by default with the login username cassandra and password cassandra. It should be changed to a more secure username and password.

For other roles, you can create roles with specific permissions to access specific keyspaces and tables. The security quickstart in the CQL documentation provides a good starting point for creating roles and setting permissions.

The following example shows how to create a role for a user named alice with the password alice and the ability to access the cycling keyspace:

Alice will be able to access the cycling keyspace, but only with the SELECT permission.

Roles can be created that allow a graded level of access to keyspaces and tables.