Tips and Tricks to Successfully Implement The RBAC
In this era of technology protecting your personal and professional data has become way more essential than ever. Although we can protect our personal data by securing it through the passwords, it can be challenging to do the same with organizational data especially when hundreds or thousands of employees access it to perform their day-to-day tasks. That’s why organizations implement the role-based access control (RBAC) method for managing and securing user access to networks and systems.
If you are a loyal reader then, you may have an idea what is Role-based access control (RBAC) and what are the advantages of implementing it in the organization. If you still haven’t read that then click on the link and read previous CISSP training course post before following this one. Taking a step further, in this blog post, we will describe the best practices to implement the RBAC in your organization. But right before we do that let’s take a quick overview of RBAC.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Definition: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is the part of the Identity and Access Management (IAM) Domain that is used to secure the critical organizational information by limiting down the network access to the necessary employees.
Must Read: Role-Based Access Control: Why Does Your Company Need It?
Features of RBAC
The key features of RBAC are;
- Define roles
- Entitlement analytics
- Role hierarchy
- Role assignment
- Manual and role-based assignments
- Role-based access requests
- Role-aware access certification
Advantages of RBAC
The main advantages of implementing the RBAC into the organizational structure are:
- Reduce the cost of user provisioning
- Improve the security of networks by eliminating inside threats
- Maximize the production efficiency
- Better reporting capabilities
- Improve audit results
- Increase employee production
What are the best practices to implement the RBAC?
Now, when you have obtained a quick overview of RBAC, it is time to learn about the best practices of RBAC within the organization.
Follow a sensible approach
You can consider the RBAC as an ongoing program, not a project because the 100 coverage of all access differs from one organization to another as you implement RBAC. A role-based access control solution can easily take between a few months to a year. Therefore, it is highly recommended to implement the RBAC in steps.
Perform an in-depth exercise to clean the waste data
Right before you implement the RBAC to define the roles, it is required to perform an in-depth exercise to clean the data. The cleaner your data is the higher the chances are there to get success with the RBAC.
Keep your start simple
One of the most common mistakes professionals make while implementing the RBAC into the enterprise structure is that they only focus on the key roles and eliminate the “discovery” factor while granting access to the employees. Don’t repeat the same mistake and take some time to figure out what access might be needed.
Focus on the target areas for high turnover
While implementing the RBAC you need to identify the business areas where the provisioning and de-provisioning processes already exist. These are the key areas that are very well understood from the access perspective.
Take small steps: Don’t try to do all the role access in a one go as it will certainly fail. As mentioned earlier, the RBAC is a process, not a project. Hence, it will take some time to set –up everything accordingly. Doing it in one go will do no good.
Wait until the IAM program mature
There are many organizations that rush things out when it comes to implementing RBAC with the IAM program. As a result, they have to go through the failure part. Although the RBAC doesn’t require the IAM system, it can be implemented much easier and efficiently with the IAM system.
Test and verify your roles
While granting access to pick out the individuals who have the best insight knowledge about their department as the role leader.
Make roles reusable
A single role in the whole organization should not be managed with the RBAC. Make sure the roles you are defining are applicable to the whole group; otherwise it will not deliver the goals of efficiency and simplification. Based on the experience of the professionals at ProICT Training, it can take years to successfully implement and work with the RBAC. However, it differs from one organization to another across different industries. Yet, having the right knowledge about the RBAC can be the game-changer for you.
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