Despite there being a diversity of attack vectors from which attackers can gain access to your most valued business assets, insider threats are one of the biggest concerns in the world of cybersecurity. Along with misplaced credentials, factors such as disgruntled employees can easily lead to the loss of data or even the attack of your organization’s applications. In fact, a quarter of surveyed companies, according to CSO Online, claimed that their recent data breaches involved the compromise of credentials.
In the worst case scenario, such incidences can result in downtimes from attackers tweaking the various parts of your application or simply holding valuable data at ransom. This is why role-based access control remains to be among the best defensive strategies in the fight against such threats. However, you will only get the most bang for your buck as long as you can approach it from the right angle.
Here are some insights to help you venture into the field of role-based access management with a higher success rate:
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Start With the Business Architecture :-
Role-based access control is supposed to be an organizational-wide activity, rather than a role reserved for the IT department. Before proceeding to invest in group policy management tools along with other necessary assets, you first need to understand how the business actually ticks. For instance, investing in tough-to-understand tools will limit the involvement of the managerial staff in access management as well as limit the success rate of your project.
Discuss with all the involved individuals on what they need access to. The management and HR department should provide you with enough information to determine best the tools that will be fit for your organization. When looking to mitigate the security risks involved, on the other hand, concentrate on the most obvious threats and move to the less likely ones afterward.
Use the Real Access Situation of Your Organization :-
When investing in access management tools, it is common for IT professionals to brainstorm what they think people should have access to. This leads to them ignoring important aspects of role-based access control. Instead, you should collaborate with the different departments in your organization to determine the already existing architecture to avoid reinventing your own wheel.
You can start with the bottom-up approach where you evaluate who has access to what and set the perimeters from there. Alternatively, you can implement a top-down approach by working with departmental leaders to determine who should be accessing what. For the best outcome, however, try blending both alternatives to promote visibility.
Build Baselines and Make Room for Tweaks
When creating different access roles, it is possible to use information that might not be clear enough. This is where the collaboration with the management comes into play. For instance, you can use an analysis tool to assess what should be the normal access behavior by bank tellers.
However, this might not be entirely the entire picture since your baselines were formulated over the weekends, which have different baselines from the weekdays. Once you formulate these baselines, forward them to the management for tweaks. Other than during the initial formulation stage, they will still need to tweak certain parts of the access control policy, especially once employee roles change or management fires an employee.
Think About Both the Risks and Rewards
Every department within the organization would like to know what is in it for them once they embrace access management. While the compliance department will want easier access to compliance data, IT departments will be looking for security and easier management of resources. The policies that you put into place should address all these needs to make implementation more successful.On the other hand, you shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the risks involved. As the access of an account is increased, so does the security risk increase. Identify these risks early and work to mitigate them to embrace security by design.
Conclusion
Access control is not all about being in control of who accesses what. The policies in place have to boost productivity and user experience as well. Consider the tips above to embrace efficient access control policies.
