Why Fine-grained Access Controls are Necessary for Enterprise Data Security?

In any organization, the ease of data access is of great significance for the smooth running of business processes. The needs and methods of data access can vary for each class of stakeholders. Having said this, providing uncontrolled/unsupervised data access to all can have severe consequences on regulatory compliance adherence, customer trust, and potential data breaches.

The focus should be to establish the right balance between data privacy, stakeholder requirements, and operational efficiency. In this blog, we will glance through how this requirement can be fulfilled.

Challenges Around Data Access

Before we talk about this approach, let us understand some of the key challenges organizations face when it comes to secure and robust data access: Data is present in multiple formats (Databases, Documents, PDFs, etc.) Data is located in disparate systems without proper access control measures.

Data access requirements of stakeholders are different.

Lack of a centralised monitoring/auditing system to keep track of user actions on data

If not taken care of, the issues mentioned above can hamper your enterprise data security and audit issues. In essence, a well-laid out data access monitoring and control mechanism are necessary for the safe handling of data and accountability in any data-driven enterprise.

What is meant by Fine-grained Access Control?

Granting each dataset/application governed by a specific access control policy is the core concept. Each set of stakeholders are given access to data strictly based on the configured policy/restrictions. In simple words, the Fine-grained Access Control mechanism defines “Who gets to access what” in an organization.

This feature is critical in regulatory compliances, prevention of unwanted/unauthorized data tampering, and enables Zero-Trust policy when it comes to enterprise data.

For instance, in a manufacturing firm, a Database Administrator defined an access policy that allows “Read and Write” privileges on invoices for an Operations manager but a “Read-only” option for a Distributor. This concept is also known as Role-based Access Control.

How Can Digitization Improve Data Access Control?

Establishing Fine-grained data access in a traditional (non-digitized) business landscape can be highly challenging. A pen and paper recording system have minimal monitoring scope, and it is prone to human errors. When the transactional data figures suffer from a mismatch, additional time and effort are consumed to validate and rectify the same. This issue brings down operational efficiency and adds up expenses.

To overcome this tricky situation, adopting a digitized system that makes your data/application access more robust and secure is the need of the hour. With well-defined User Access Policies configurable as per need, your data access woes can be eliminated.

At NITS Informatics, our digitized solutions are curated for implementing automated Fine-grained data access controls. We ensure that each category of stakeholders gets access to specific data or applications in a fully-authorized manner. Whenever there is a need for access policy changes, our solutions are adaptable to incorporate them without impacting business continuity. Business stakeholders’ data access requirements get fulfilled seamlessly with zero-compromise on data privacy, legal regulations, and performance.

Conclusion

Who gets to view and modify business-critical data/applications is a burning question faced by most enterprises. The absence of well-defined and reliable control mechanisms can impact daily operations hugely.

Once you decide to embark on a digitization journey with NITS Informatics, our automated and configurable Fine-grained access control measures will come to the rescue. Transactional errors, unwanted data access/manipulations can be kept at bay. Let us take charge of accountability and monitoring the access to your valuable business process data and enterprise applications.