With a growing proportion of IT infrastructure now hosted in the cloud and protected by the security teams of major platform providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, the primary focus for data protection has shifted to managing who can get in. While securing your assets on a hosted platform is generally the platform provider’s responsibility, controlling who can reach those assets is yours.
Sensitive information and business-critical systems should be protected by permission controls implemented at every point where users interact with them. If your organization handles sensitive records, you would benefit from managed IT services. New York companies face an increasing number of attempted cyberattacks every year, and those with professionally managed cybersecurity are far better positioned to withstand them.
User permission management has become even more pressing as more organizations embrace flexible and remote working. When staff can theoretically reach your network and files from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, verifying that they are who they claim to be matters more than ever.
Striking the right balance between protection and usability is one of the core challenges of implementing these controls. You want a level of security that blocks unauthorized users without creating friction for legitimate ones. Finding that balance is one of the areas where a managed IT partner like Carden IT Services can make a real difference.
Here are three aspects of user permission management every organization should consider:
- What Are the Risks and Goals of Your Permission Policy?
Assess your organization’s sensitive information and critical infrastructure. Identify which assets carry the most risk and establish a clear process for granting and revoking access rights. - Which Team Members Need Access to What?
Not every member of your team needs to reach every part of your IT environment. A best practice is to segment your workforce into groups and grant each group permissions only for the systems and information they actually need to do their job, nothing more. - Who Is Responsible for Maintaining Your Permission Policies?
Your policies are not static. They need to evolve continuously as people join or leave your workforce, employees change roles, and new software and systems come online. Someone must own this responsibility.
Your permission framework should also include a log of every entry request, both successful and unsuccessful, and those logs should be reviewed on a regular basis.
For all of these reasons, maintaining and auditing your policies and records needs to be assigned to a trusted team member or third-party specialist. Carden IT Services can provide this as part of our comprehensive cybersecurity service.
Any effective, modern security environment includes stringent controls over who can reach what. Addressing the points above will give your company a solid foundation for protecting business-critical systems and sensitive information from unauthorized use.
If you would like help devising, implementing, and maintaining an effective permissions policy, speak to our security team today.
