---
title: "Introducing updates to Cerbos PDP"
description: "Cerbos PDP, a policy decision point, is an authorization layer that can evolve as your product grows. It enables developers to define powerful, context-aware access control in simple, intuitive, and testable policies. "
author: "Alex Olivier"
date: "2024-12-03T13:13:21.506Z"
canonical: "https://www.cerbos.dev/blog/updates-to-cerbos-pdp-open-source-authorization-solution"
image: "https://stylish-appliance-1c1cc1c30d.media.strapiapp.com/cerbos_pdp_open_source_authorization_solution_new_features_e6d47f8393.png"
tags: ["announcement","guide"]
source: "https://www.cerbos.dev/blog/updates-to-cerbos-pdp-open-source-authorization-solution"
---

# Introducing updates to Cerbos PDP

Permission management across applications is difficult, especially as the code base grows: you have hundreds of users, many services in different languages, and several environments. Hardcoded access control rules tangled with business logic make every new role and permission change a hassle to write, test, and maintain. 

The access rules need to stay consistent across the entire code base to avoid security loopholes and vulnerabilities. [Cerbos PDP](https://www.cerbos.dev/product-cerbos-pdp) is an open source solution to solve exactly that.

Cerbos PDP, a policy decision point, is an authorization layer that can evolve as your product grows. It enables developers to define powerful, context-aware access control in simple, intuitive, and testable policies. Here’s a [video explaining how it works.](https://www.cerbos.dev/how-it-works)

![FINAL DIAGRAM AUGUST 5 2026.png](https://stylish-appliance-1c1cc1c30d.media.strapiapp.com/FINAL_DIAGRAM_AUGUST_5_2026_91a35fbf88.png)

## Key capabilities & updates

- **Infinitely scalable RBAC and ABAC.** Users can author role-based or attributed-based access control policies. As well as define an unlimited number of roles, user permissions, and access control policies without affecting performance.
- **Decoupled authorization decision point** that extracts complex access control logic into centrally managed and versioned policies. Cerbos also provides a framework to comprehensively test and deploy policies. It reduces code complexity, bugs, security vulnerabilities, and multiple if/then/else conditions.
- **A plug-and-play & language-agnostic** solution that works with any authentication/identity provider (Okta/Auth0, Active Directory, Entra ID, etc.) and seamlessly integrates into your existing infrastructure. Comes with SDKs for all popular languages, and example implementations in modern frameworks.
- **Authorize anywhere.** Cerbos’ stateless design enables it to be run anywhere in your own infrastructure:  in the cloud, across clouds, on-premise, at the edge, or directly on end user devices. Cerbos is optimized for sub-millisecond evaluation without having to synchronize data.
- **Centralized audit logs** of all authorization requests help compliance with ISO27001, SOC2, and HIPAA requirements through real-time change logs for auditing access controls. 

## Some of the newly added features

- **Support for policy versioning and scoping** enabling per-tenant, per application policy design and iteration fitting into existing software development workflows.
- **Policy inspection** via cerbosctl inspect command and API endpoint provides programmatic access to an outline of policies, to drive UI and policy manipulation as well as supporting debugging.
- **Detailed error reporting** with concise policy test outputs and clear error descriptions along with contextual information, to help debug access policies issues faster.
- **Artifact signing and SBOM generation.** All Cerbos release artifacts, binaries and containers, are now signed using Sigstore, making them verifiable for end-to-end software supply chain security.
- **Local PDPs connected to Cerbos Hub Playgrounds** enable developers to author policies and in real time see their impact in the application they are developing. 

Have a look at our [release notes for more details.](https://docs.cerbos.dev/cerbos/latest/releases/v0.40.0)

## Getting started with Cerbos PDP

If you’d like to get started with the open source Cerbos PDP, visit the [quickstart page of our documentation.](https://docs.cerbos.dev/cerbos/latest/quickstart)

And feel free to [contribute to our code](https://github.com/cerbos/cerbos) and [ecosystem](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/ecosystem) of integrations.

PS. We’re also excited to share that this week we [surpassed 3333 stars on Github!](https://github.com/cerbos/cerbos)