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Everything You Need to Know About Role-Based Access Control

By October 5, 2020No Comments6 min read
Role-Based Access Control RBAC

RBAC is a very important security paradigm for companies. It will protect your data and application from attackers. You can implement the least privilege principle by using RBAC systems. New employees will have access to limited resources only. RBAC should be completely transparent to your users. The assignment will happen in the backend. Your employees can access the data and applications that they need. In this article, we are going to talk about RBAC.

Basics of RBAC:

There are three common principles that are used by RBAC systems. The implementation process will vary according to the organization. However, you need to follow these basic principles:

  1. Role assignment: Your users can only access the resources if they have been assigned a role.
  2. Authorization: Someone in your IT team will add the team member. In simple words, the role of the subject will be authorized by someone trustworthy.
  3. Permission authorization: Users can only access the resources that have been authorized to them. If your users need access to more resources, then they should contact the admin.

RBAC is very important for protecting your resources and data. Data breaches mostly occur due to human mistakes. If your employees have access to your entire network, then attackers only need to target your employees. Sometimes your employees can actually work with hackers. They might steal data from your network. Thus, it is important to ensure that your employees can only access the data that they need.

It will be difficult to implement this RBAC paradigm. You need access to a good IT security team for implementing this paradigm. Also, you need to determine the resources and data which are important for your employees.

You can use various factors for defining these roles. This will ensure that companies can figure out if a user is an admin, specialist user, or an end-user. You can also ensure that your employees can only perform specific tasks. For example, your employees might have to ability to view files only. This will ensure that they can’t modify important files. You should also limit network access.

Benefits of RBAC:

Some of the benefits of using RBAC are:-

  • Better operational efficiency: If you are using RBAC, then you can decrease the paperwork. RBAC will help you in quickly changing and adding roles. You can implement these tools on different platforms, applications, and operating systems.
  • Enhancing security compliance: Every company needs to follow some federal, state, and local regulations. You can meet these regulatory requirements by implementing RBAC systems. RBAC systems will ensure that your IT department and executives can manage how the data is being used and accessed. This is very important for healthcare companies and financial institutions as they are handling sensitive data.
  • Reducing costs: You should ensure that your users have access to certain applications and processes. This will reduce the load from some important applications. Your employees will use less storage, memory, and network bandwidth.
  • Decreasing probability of data breaches: If you are using RBAC, then it will ensure that your employees can’t access your sensitive information. This will help you in avoiding data and security breaches.
  • More visibility to admins: RBAC will give more visibility to your managers and network admins. They can check what your users are accessing. Also, it will guarantee that only authorized users can access your resources. You can also add a guest account to your systems. However, make sure that they have limited to very limited resources. This will ensure that your employees can efficiently do their work. Your employees can focus on the applications that are available.

Best practices for RBAC implementation:

  • First, you need to determine the resources that your employees need access to. Make sure that you have a list of all the applications, email systems, and customer databases.
  • You need to analyze your entire workforce. This will help you in establishing roles and responsibilities. If you are creating too many roles, then it will defeat the aim of RABC and you will have user-based access control. For example, every company will have a basic user account. This user will have to things like corporate intranet and email. You can also create roles like a customer service representative. They will have to write and read access to the database. Also, you need to create a customer database admin. The admin will have access to the entire customer database.
  • Make sure that you have a list of all the access rights and roles. After that, you need to assign your employees and set their access.
  • Make sure that you can quickly change the role of your employees. Some of your employees might leave your company in the future. Thus, make sure that you can easily delete their accounts.
  • Make sure that the RBAC systems are properly integrated.
  • You should conduct training sessions as it will ensure that your employees know about the RBAC system.
  • You should also conduct audits of the roles. If some roles are unnecessary, then you can either change the role or change the access level.

Conclusion

If you want to protect your data from data loss, then you should implement RBAC systems. It will ensure that only authorized employees can access your systems and data. However, it is very difficult to implement RBAC-based systems. You should have access to a good in-house IT security team. Thus, you should consider working with an experienced MSP like Bleuwire. They will help you in implementing these complex systems. If you need more information regarding RBAC, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.