Controlled access to data is essential for any business that has confidential or proprietary information. Any company that has employees connected to the internet must have robust access control measures in place. Daniel Crowley, IBM’s X Force Red team head of research, explains that access control is a way to selectively restrict information to a specific group of people and under certain conditions. There are two main components, authentication and authorization.

Authentication is the process of verifying that the person to whom you are trying to gain access is the person they claim to be. It also involves the verification of passwords or other credentials that need to be provided prior to granting access to the network, application or file.

Authorization refers to the granting of access based on a particular job in the company for example, marketing, HR, or engineering. The most efficient and popular method to restrict access technologyform com is through role-based access control. This kind of access is governed by policies that identify the information required for certain business tasks and assigns permission to the appropriate roles.

It is simpler to manage and monitor any changes if you have a policy for access control which is standard. It is important to ensure that policies are clearly communicated to employees to ensure that they are careful with sensitive information, and to have a procedure for revoking access when an employee leaves the company and/or changes their job or is terminated.