Discretionary access control is an effective way to balance security and accessibility. It can also help organizations like sanctuaries and spiritual centers keep doors open during services while securing sensitive areas. RBAC allows administrators to categorize access permissions based on their role in the company rather than assigning rights to individuals. The advantage of this is that it allows for greater granularity and flexibility.
Increased Security
Access control policies and models ensure that only authorized individuals have access to your sensitive data, applications, technologies, and critical infrastructure. These logical and physical restrictions prevent the accidental or malicious exposure, disclosure, or theft of confidential information or systems.
To identify a person or application, access control systems verify credentials that establish their authenticity and authorize the appropriate permissions. These credentials may include passwords, personal identification numbers (PINs), security tokens, or biometric scans. Multi-factor authentication, which requires two or more authentication factors, is also often used to enhance the protection of these systems.
Role-based access control is an operational configuration of these systems that grants access to users based on their position within the organization. Organizations with strict security needs, such as government agencies and financial institutions, typically use this system.
Attribute-based access control is a more dynamic method that allows applications or line managers to use attributes and environmental conditions, such as time of day, to determine access privileges.
This method is suitable for businesses with many teams and dynamic work processes. Regularly evaluating access control systems for effectiveness is essential. This process will help to identify any issues that might negatively impact business operations, employee productivity, or compliance concerns. In addition, these assessments will help to create a plan for any necessary improvements.
Reduced Costs
The ability to control who has access to what resources and how much they can use them helps reduce costs for businesses of all sizes. If your employees have access to more than they need, they can easily corrupt data or even cause security incidents like unauthorized ransomware. By implementing access control policies that are more flexible and fine-grained, you can help mitigate these risks.
For example, role-based access control (RBAC) models utilize the idea of least privilege and grant staff permissions based on their specific job roles. This allows admins to ensure staff only have access to areas and resources necessary to perform their duties, such as IT teams having full access to server rooms. At the same time, office workers are restricted to communal spaces.
This reduces the risk of unauthorized personnel gaining access to sensitive information and makes monitoring and auditing activity easier. It also reduces the time spent granting and re-granting access as employees move through the company, quit their jobs, or are fired.
By having an automated process to revoke access for these individuals, you can keep your sensitive information secure and limit any damage that could be caused by someone else using their credentials to gain access to your data.
Increased Flexibility
Choosing an access control model that works with your specific business needs helps ensure a top-tier user experience and saves time for admins. Some models lean less heavily on discrete identities and more on other factors, such as the person’s role or location. These systems provide scalability and flexibility that meet the needs of growing businesses and evolving job functions. For example, with a mandatory access control (MAC) model, you can create security rules that uniformly expand the scope of privileges over time.
This nondiscretionary access control approach is commonly used in government and military environments. Another standard model is role-based access control, which grants permissions based on defined job functions rather than individual identity. For instance, a sales associate might need access to client contact information and recent history but not detailed billing data or sensitive customer records.
With this model, the administrator assigns the role and then the access rights that go with it. It’s also essential to monitor and document how a policy works so you can spot any issues and address them before they become significant problems. This will help you reduce the risk of blocked privileges, which can interfere with employee productivity and compromise the goals and mission of your organization.
Increased Compliance
An access control model helps ensure that only the people you want access to your data, systems, and technologies do so. This can reduce the risk of theft and other security breaches by preventing people from doing what they shouldn’t do with your sensitive information. By limiting access to specific locations, databases, and devices, an access control policy can help you meet compliance mandates, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and GDPR.
This can help you avoid fines and other penalties for violations of regulations. For example, a role-based access control (RBAC) policy can ensure that your team members have only the permissions they need to perform their jobs. This includes ensuring management teams access most entry points and critical data while lower-level employees only have access to communal areas and low-risk environments.
Additionally, this type of access control system can prevent unauthorized users from accessing more sensitive information by following the Bell-LaPadula MAC model, which uses a hierarchy to assign different levels of security to users and resources.
While implementing an access control policy can take time and resources, it will ensure that your company protects confidential information from unauthorized users and maintains strict compliance standards. You can choose the best one for your needs by understanding the options and models available.