If your company has information that is classified as proprietary or confidential, limiting access to the data is crucial. Access control is essential for any business that has employees who connect to the internet. At its most basic, access control is an exclusive restriction of information to specific users and in certain circumstances, says Daniel Crowley, head of research for IBM’s X-Force Red team, which is focused on data security. There are two main components, authorization and authentication.
Authentication involves ensuring that the person you’re trying to gain access to is who they claim to be. It also includes the verification a password or technologyform com any other credentials that are required before granting access to a system, network, application, a system or file.
Authorization refers to granting access based on a particular role in the business, such as engineering, HR or marketing. Role-based access control (RBAC) is one of the most common and effective ways to limit access. This type of access is controlled by policies that determine the information needed for certain business tasks and assigns access rights to the appropriate roles.
If you have a standard access control policy in place it is much easier to monitor and manage changes as they happen. It’s important to ensure that policies are clearly communicated to employees to encourage careful handling of sensitive information, and to have procedures for revocation of access when an employee leaves the business or alters their role, or is terminated.