Access control to data is crucial for businesses that have confidential or proprietary information. Access control is an essential requirement for any company that has employees who are connected to the internet. Daniel Crowley, IBM’s X Force Red team head of research, explains that access control is a means to selectively restrict information to specific people and under certain conditions. There are two main components: authorization and authentication.
Authentication is the process of confirming that the person to whom you want to gain access is who they claim to be. It also includes the verification of a password or other credentials that need to be provided before allowing access to an application, network or file.
Authorization is technologyform com the process of granting access to specific areas based on roles within a business like engineering, HR, marketing and so on. The most efficient and well-known method of limiting access is to use role-based access control. This type of access entails policies that determine the required information to carry out certain business functions and assign permissions to the appropriate roles.
If you have a standard access control policy it is much easier to monitor and manage changes as they occur. It is important that policies are clearly communicated with staff to encourage them to take care when handling sensitive information. Also, there should be a procedure in place for removing access from employees who quit the company, change their position, or are dismissed.