The two fundamentals of a successful access control system

The list of criteria can easily grow when looking for the right access control approach for your business. At Torsion we recommend keeping two overarching criteria firmly at the top of the list. Here we look at those two key goals to focus on:

Make it a match

The first is to match, as accurately as possible, ‘who should have access to what’ with ‘who has access to what’. The better the match, the likelihood of people having access to data they shouldn’t have decreases, and the more secure the data becomes. This optimises the security and compliance of the organisation. Keep this as a key objective and keep checking back to assess whether your choice of system is achieving it.

Make it manageable

The second goal is that an access control system needs to be as easy and cost effective to maintain as possible. If a system is too time consuming or manual to maintain, it won’t be sustainable.

Access control needs to continuously evolve with an organisation, particularly in a world where the volume data is growing so rapidly and organisations are continually changing. When somebody changes role, department, location or assignment, there will be information pertaining to their previous situation to which they no longer need access, and information pertaining to their new role to which they need fresh access to. You can see why the access control configurations need to be regularly maintained. The cost of this maintenance can easily become considerable or simply unfeasible. And so the goal is to minimise the costs and the manual resources required to keep the system up to date. This is where the right level of automation and integration with your existing systems is key.

Torsion can help with your access control decision making process or help assess whether your existing system is meeting these goals. Email info@torsion-is.com for more information.