What is Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)?

Role-based access controls, also known as RBAC, is a term you hear thrown around a lot in the identity governance space. The brainchild of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), RBAC was brought into the world of cybersecurity in 1992 to help organizations better manage who has access to what. More specifically, RBAC is a security measure that restricts access to systems and information based on an individual's role. By aligning access permissions with job responsibilities, RBAC ensures that employees only have the access necessary to perform their duties.

So, what does that actually look like?

Let’s use a hospital as our role based access control example. You have doctors, nurses, and administrative staff that all work there. Each of these various cohorts require not only different access levels, but differing application access altogether based on their job duties and what they need to accomplish. For example:

• Doctors need to be able to access patient medical records in order to effectively treat their patients, write prescriptions, and request lab tests.
• Nurses on the other hand shouldn’t have access that would allow them to write prescriptions, but they do need to update patient charts and administer medication.
• Administrative staff require access to the applications that allow them to handle billing and appointment scheduling. And, while they might have access to things doctors don’t, like payroll, they can't see the detailed medical records doctors have access to.

Each role has specific permissions based on their job responsibilities, ensuring that everyone can only access the information necessary for their tasks.

Now, while RBAC may not be top-of-mind for many companies, most actually implement role-based access controls without necessarily ever thinking about it that way. Instead, it happens organically when teams start asking questions like “Are you a manager?” or “Are you on the executive leadership team?”.  

In short: Role-based access control provides a way for organizations to “simplify” the management of large numbers of employees for basic access needs via the power of automation.  

Why is RBAC Important?

Now that we have covered what role-based access control is, let’s explore why it matters. RBAC’s benefits come down to four key areas: Enhanced Security, Compliance and Auditing, Reduced Risk, and Reduced Costs.

1. Enhanced Security
   Let's start with security—our favorite topic.  If your company manages sensitive information, ensuring only those with the right role get access can help ensure data is always used appropriately.  To use the doctor analogy, you wouldn’t want the billing department writing prescriptions, right?  Defined roles help align the systems and access you need to accomplish your daily work. With great adoption of a role structure, it’s much easier to implement least privilege access controls. 
   
   
2. Compliance and Auditing
   Many industries face stringent regulations about data access and protection. RBAC helps you stay compliant by providing a clear, auditable trail of who is expected to have access to what information.  In fact, one of the most underutilized aspects of role-based access is its potential to simplify your standard user access review!  If everyone in the company has an email address, rather than review that same access over and over again, add it to the “birthright” access for the role, and simplify your user access reviews. 
   
   
3. Reduced Risk
   RBAC also adheres to the principle of least privilege, which means employees have only the access they need to do their jobs. This reduces the potential for misuse of information. Oftentimes, access is organically added over time leading to a hodgepodge of different access for different team members. Much of this access isn’t strictly required for the role, but was convenient to give at the time. Over time (Think: years), these ad hoc access additions (sometimes also combined with multiple job changes), accumulate and become truly unsafe levels of access without something more structured in place.  
   
   
4. Reduced Cost
   “Do you really need that?” is now a conversation with some structure to it.  Having roles allows you to better understand what people need to do their jobs, and forces you to “write it down”.  Every team can benefit from a conversation on whether they really need another tool, or really need that sensitive permission. However, these are the hard conversations that will save your company money. 

Now that you understand what RBAC is and why it’s essential, it’s important to note that, in order for role-based access controls to be impactful and beneficial for your organization, there are some recommended best practices.

Role-Based Access Control Best Practices

Implementing RBAC effectively involves following some best practices:

• Define Clear Roles: Clearly define roles within your organization and assign appropriate access permissions to each role.
• Adhere to the Least Privilege Principle: Grant employees the minimum level of access necessary to perform their jobs.
• Conduct Regular Role Audits: Regularly review and update roles and permissions to ensure they align with current organizational needs and regulatory requirements.
• Automate Where Possible: Use RBAC tools to automate the assignment and revocation of access permissions, reducing the risk of human error.

Where do I start?

Step 1: Understand how your company access is organized 

If you are just getting started with role-based management, the first and, potentially hardest, conversation to have is how do you want to organize your teams.  Organizational structure is simple, but may not really match how people use tools.  

Here’s an example:

CEO

• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer Success
• Product
• Engineering
• Support
• Services

If you created roles around those departments, that works. However, it’s potentially more work than required.  You could just as easily have roles structured around what’s needed like this:

Revenue

• Customer Facing
  • Sales
  • Customer Success
  • Services
• Non-customer facing
  • Marketing
  • Product
  • Engineering

Depending on how the grouping works, most of the access could be added to higher level roles like “customer facing” or “non-customer facing”. 

More importantly, taking a step back from the example is that you want to be using HR data to drive these decisions.  Do you have your employees categorized in a way that lends itself to thinking like this?  This is a good thing to explore with your HR teams. 

Clarity Security: The simplest RBAC Solution out there

We know role based access control and least privilege access is the future. Here’s how we incorporate RBAC into our product to make it simple to do:

• Attribute-Based Role Membership / Dynamic Role Membership: HR data automates the assignment and revocation of roles using a system of truth attributes to drive assignment, ensuring everyone has the right role.
• Role Hierarchy:  Role access is inherited, allowing you to start with “global access” that everyone gets, and then adding more and more layers of access.  Think division/department/job title or country/product/supervisor.  However you want to organize access, each layer can grant more.
• Automatic Role Entitlement Discovery: Take birthright access everyone has within a role, and Clarity will automatically build your role entitlement structure, as well as recommend entitlements that should be added based on actual access in your organization. 
• Comprehensive Auditing and Role Reviews: Regular audits help maintain the integrity of your RBAC hierarchy and access.
• Role Aware User Access Reviews: Spend less time reviewing birthright access and instead review higher risk exceptions. 
• Role Based Lifecycle Management: Our lifecycle management is role based by design, allowing you to easily define the access for a given role, and Clarity will automate enforcing it
• Separation of Duties: Support for more rigid requirements like separation of duties (required for SOX compliance). 

Rely on Clarity for effective role-based access controls, allowing you to concentrate on important tasks and contribute to your organization’s success. 

Ready to see how Clarity Security can simplify your access controls? Schedule a demo now and discover how our solutions can help your organization achieve its security and operational goals.