As hundreds of businesses move staff into temporary roles or take on temporary workers, one organisation is using the latest automation technology to securely assign access to the data their changing workforce needs.
The problem
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, one particular government agency has had to furlough some of their workforce, but where possible they re-assigned responsibilities so as many employees can continue to work from home as possible.
However, to ensure each employee could start working in their new roles, they needed to make sure everybody had access to the right files and folders.
Granting temporary access to internal data, within a collaboration platform such as Teams or Sharepoint can often be a logistical headache: first establishing who needs access to what information; then updating permissions manually; and finally revoking that access once it is no longer needed. There can often be a period of a couple of weeks where employees can’t do their job as they don’t have access to the information they need. If access is not revoked when the temporary roles end, it leads to out of control access and potential security breaches.
This is the situation now facing many businesses taking on temporary workers during the pandemic.
The solution
The agency started using Torsion to automatically manage their files and folder permissions last year. The technology works within their Teams platform to monitor access, alert business users to any security issues and remove access when it is not needed.
Within the Torsion platform, the agency can grant temporary access to files and folders for a set period of time. Torsion automatically works out what information a team member might need, in addition to their existing permissions, and grants them access for a fixed number of days. At the end of the period the access is automatically revoked.
The temporary team members are up and running with everything they need almost immediately, and the company has a clear audit trail of who has access to what information, when and why.
Peter Bradley of Torsion says: “Organisations are having to react to highly transient workforces and different ways of working during the coronavirus outbreak. Only with automation will businesses be able to stay in control of their data and act swiftly to ensure their teams have appropriate access without compromising their data security.”