The Digital Big Bang

7ACCESS CONTROL

“A one-size-fits-all approach to access control is no longer sufficient.”

Erik Devine, Riverside Health

“We live in a world we want to trust, but because there is so much at stake, we also need to verify.”

George Do, Equinix

As a parallel and complement to effective segmentation, covered next, access control effectively protects specific datasets in alignment with their value, importance, and risk if breached. Access control has deep roots in our cultural history; those with belongings such as food or tools wanted to limit others' access to their stuff by using doors, cabinets, keys, locks, chains, and many other mechanisms. Access control quickly expanded to include geographic borders and—perhaps even more strongly—borders defined by shared ideology, theology, identity, and beliefs. Access control writ large is in headlines today in terms of mechanisms to control borders, immigration, and citizenship.

The business of Internet security is about granting or denying permission for people to get to assets. Proxies sometimes represent people—software, processes, hardware—but each of those things serves a person's need. Assets can be either data—zeros and ones—or computing—the power to manipulate the zeros and ones. Access control provides a means of ensuring that people, processes, and technology touch only the assets they are supposed to.

In a world of ...