Access control is essential to ensure your company’s digital assets remain secure. This includes limiting physical access to buildings, rooms, and data centers and logical access to critical data areas, such as privileged accounts.
It’s also critical to have a zero trust security framework to prevent unauthorized access from remote working practices, BYOD, and unmanaged devices.
Security
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In today’s digital world, we juggle various identities across multiple systems and devices. This fragmented identity makes it challenging to answer the most critical security question: Who are you?
A comprehensive access control system lets businesses know who enters and exits a building. This gives businesses a clearer picture should there be a theft, burglary, or break-in. Access control can provide a comprehensive audit trail of who was where and when, whether in a physical or cloud environment.
Access control can also help businesses meet security regulations. For example, hospitals and schools must protect sensitive information like lab equipment or chemicals from untrained personnel. And companies that store credit card data must adhere to HIPPA or PCI regulations and restrict access to IT rooms and servers.
In addition, many access control systems offer real-time statistics and analytics so you can instantly see who is going where and when. This helps prevent issues that might only be apparent after a door is opened more than once or twice as many people entering one room as usual.
Control
Whether you’re looking to control access to your office, car park, communal entrance way or private flat, an access control system allows you to restrict entry to spaces and ensures only those who should be there can do so. This helps deter theft, prevent accidents, and ensures people work when they’re supposed to be (a must for any office or school).
Many modern access control systems provide real-time reporting with statistics, analytics, and tracking information. If a door is opened more than usual or there are twice as many people in one room as they should be, you’ll get an instant alert and know exactly who was where at the time of the incident.
In addition, an access control system can be set to require more than just a swipe card or PIN code to gain entry, such as a biometric scan of a user’s fingerprint or unique iris pattern. This provides extra security and can be helpful for larger organizations with a centralized security office making policy decisions about who can enter which areas.
Compliance
A strong access control system can reduce legal liabilities by limiting who has physical or digital access to company assets. One of the importance of access control is that it helps your business avoid costly lawsuits or the loss of customers’ trust after a breach. This is because it helps you meet industry regulations that require decent logical and physical access controls.
Access control systems help you stay compliant by identifying a user, verifying their identity and credentials (such as their name, ID number, or IP address), and then authorizing them to access specific areas of your business or facility. They also help you enforce policies, such as requiring password changes and off-boarding procedures that include security clearance revocation. In addition, access control solutions can limit insider threats by establishing access certification and review processes that identify excessive privileges and revoke them when necessary. This ensures that employees have only the minimum access rights they need to do their jobs and that your data remains secure. This is a crucial compliance component in growing cyber threats and increasing regulatory demands.
Efficiency
A vital component of the modern zero trust security framework, access control prevents sensitive information from leaking to unauthorized individuals or devices. It also helps organizations meet their data security policies and ensures that users are only given the privileges they need for their job. Excessive access is a significant security risk because individuals with too much access may be able to see confidential data, non-public personal information, or intellectual property.
For instance, a stadium could use an access control system to verify that janitors and other employees have the proper clearance for various facility areas. This would protect spectators from being assaulted and prevent unwanted intruders from entering the area.
Similarly, schools can use access control to limit access to students and professors so they don’t have unsupervised access to dangerous chemicals or equipment. This could help them comply with homeland security regulations without sacrificing a welcoming environment for visitors. In addition, access systems that integrate with other building automation systems can save energy and money by regulating the heating, cooling, and lighting only to be used when spaces will be occupied.
Flexibility
Traditional key-based security gets complicated if you have multiple locations or need to grant access to people working at different times of the day. An access control system can provide the flexibility needed to handle these situations.
Role-based access control (RBAC) grants access based on a role and allows only actions that match that role, so users cannot modify system information. This approach works best for larger organizations that can define roles based on job function, responsibility, and authority.
Touchless technology is a growing trend in access control systems. Not only does it eliminate a potential illness-spreading vector, but it also reduces wear and tear on the system hardware.
Another flexibility feature in access control is remote management. With more and more people following flexible work patterns like hotdesking, telecommuting, and working from home, managing access remotely is essential.