Data access management is crucial to firms’ safeguarding of sensitive information and preventing cyberattacks. It also supports regulatory compliance and business continuity.
A good access management system strategy leverages the principle of least privilege to grant access to applications or data resources only to those who need it. This reduces risks and improves security and productivity.
Authentication
Authentication is verifying that users are who they say they are. This step is essential to protecting sensitive data assets against unauthorized access, which can be a primary cause of cyberattacks. Authentication ensures that users have only the right to access and use information, applications, and other data resources needed for their specific job functions.
Many firms employ multiple forms of authentication to validate user identities, including usernames and passwords, PINs, security tokens, biometric scans, and more. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds a layer of protection by requiring at least two verification factors to log in to applications, networks, and data centers.
Role-based access control (RBAC) is one of the most popular methods for regulating access to data. This model gives employees the right to access the files they need to do their jobs, which can be further regulated with permissions and access roles.
A more advanced form of IAM is attribute-based access control, which combines RBAC with dynamic attributes like time and geographic location to provide a more layered mitigation strategy against unauthorized access. This type of IAM can also help firms achieve demonstrable GDPR compliance, a critical component of the new Data Protection Regulation.
Authorization
Determining who can access data or files involves both authentication and authorization. Authentication confirms an individual’s identity and verifies their credentials, while authorization determines whether they can access specific data sets. This is why security systems are designed to work with each other, preventing breaches and unauthorized entry by using a database of authorized personnel and the permissions associated with their credentials and devices. If someone outside this authorized list attempts to gain access, the system will prevent them and alert authorities of the breach.
Data protection is important for many reasons, including protecting against cyberattacks, maintaining business continuity, and complying with regulations. In addition, it’s crucial to protect data from loss or theft by ensuring that only authorized individuals can access it. This can be achieved through effective password management, enforcing a least privilege policy, separating duties, and using secure file transfer solutions like CAM.
For example, a firm’s IT team can use CAM to automatically set up a user’s device, applications, and workspaces with their preferred credentials when they join the company. This ensures that users have the right permissions to perform their job functions while reducing time spent on administrative tasks. Additionally, it allows the IT department to easily view and change evolving access roles and rights with a simplified workflow.
Access Control
As a business owner, you are responsible for ensuring access to digital and physical resources is limited to those who need it for work-related reasons. This applies to both employees and customers.
To keep sensitive data secure, an access control system must verify a user’s identity, determine their role and responsibilities in the company, and assign granular access rights accordingly. Various access control models exist to help safeguard your assets, including RBAC (role-based access control), ABAC (attribute-based access control), and DAC (discretionary access control).
Role-based access controls give permissions on a group level rather than an individual user account. This helps ensure lower-level employees don’t gain access to confidential information and prevents higher-level workers from getting their hands on more sensitive materials. It’s also a great option for businesses that want to avoid the tedious manual process of assigning access privileges to every employee.
A key element of a strong security system is the ability to audit and record all privileged user activity. Using this information, you can identify who can view or edit confidential data and limit access to those people only.
Auditing
Once an IAM system authenticates a user, it must verify that the person can access resources. This is called authorization, and IAM systems are configured to grant access to tools based on the type of authority given — which might be determined by factors like job title, tenure, security clearance, and project. Additionally, IAM systems should support granular authorization by ensuring that users are granted the right level of access for each tool they use.
A key component of this is auditing. This is where an IAM system will log all activities, alert the IT department when something goes wrong, and record what permissions have been assigned or changed. This is critical because it helps enterprises to comply with new government regulations, improve business operations and meet new standards.
A high-quality audit should be carried out by an independent party with a good understanding of IAM. This will help to avoid any bias or conflicts of interest that may influence the outcome of an audit and help to identify weaknesses in IAM policies and processes. The audit should look at things like if IAM has been configured to enable Zero Trust, whether encryption is being used to protect data, and how the company is managing the lifecycle of its identities, including provisioning, de-provisioning, deactivating, and expiring.
