Row-level security is a rule that decides which rows of a table a person is allowed to see. The sales table is shared by everyone, but each representative sees only rows for their territory; each store manager sees their store; each customer in a portal sees only their own orders. One dashboard, one set of rules, and every viewer sees a different slice of it without knowing the rest exists.
It matters the moment a dashboard is shared beyond the people who built it. A distributor with 40 sales reps does not want 40 copies of the sales dashboard, and it definitely does not want rep A browsing rep B’s accounts. A franchise head office wants every franchisee on the same page with only their own figures. A clinic group wants each practice manager to see their practice. Row rules make “one page for everyone” safe.
Row-level security is the partner of column-level security, which hides specific columns such as salary or cost. Rows answer “which records”; columns answer “which facts”. The test to apply to any tool is whether the rule holds outside the dashboard: in the CSV download, the scheduled PDF, the embedded view and the AI answer. A rule that only applies on screen is decoration.
In Klayara, row rules are attached to the data itself, set per person or role, and enforced identically in dashboards, downloads, scheduled reports, embedded views and AI chat, with an activity log of changes. See security and permissions and the row-level security guide.