Reza Rad takes a crack at row-level security within Power BI desktop:
Row Level security is about applying security on a data row level. For example sales manager of united states, should only see data for United States and not for the Europe. Sales Manager of Europe won’t be able to see sales of Australia or United States. And someone from board of directors can see everything. Row Level Security is a feature that is still in preview mode, and it was available in Power BI service, here I mentioned how to use it in the service. However big limitation that I mentioned in that post was that with every update of the report or data set from Power BI Desktop, or in other words with every publish from Power BI Desktop, the whole row level security will be wiped out. The reason was that Row Level Security wasn’t part of Power BI model. Now in the new version of Power BI Desktop, the security configuration is part of the model, and will be deployed with the model.
This is a great security feature, so I’m happy to see the Power BI team taking it the next step forward and integrating RLS directly into Power BI desktop.