If your business has any information that is classified as private or confidential, having control over access to that information is essential. Any company that has employees connected to the internet must have strong access control measures in place. Daniel Crowley, IBM’s X Force Red team head of research, explains that access control is a method to restrict access to specific individuals and under specific conditions. There are two major components, authentication and authorization.
Authentication is the process of confirming that the person you are trying to gain access is the person they claim to be. It also includes the verification the password or other credentials required before allowing access a network, application, file or system.
Authorization is the process of granting access to certain areas based on roles within a company such as marketing, HR, engineering and more. The most effective and common method of limiting access is through the use of role-based access control. This type of access is governed data room valuable information by policies that identify the required information to perform certain business functions and assigns permission to the appropriate roles.
If you have a well-defined access control policy it is much easier to monitor and control changes as they happen. It is essential that policies are clearly communicated with employees to make them aware of how to be cautious when handling sensitive information. It is also recommended to have a procedure in place for revoking access to employees who quit the company, change their position or are terminated.