What exactly is driving the adoption of RBAC?
According to the 2024 Cisco Cyber Trends Report, information stealers are the biggest threat category today. The focus is stored passwords, VPN login credentials, sessions data, and crypto wallets.
Meanwhile, ransomware -- once the corporate world’s most feared nemesis – is now #3 on Cisco’s list. Only 29% of businesses paid in Q4 2023 to get their data back, compared to 85% in Q1 2019. Hackers are now turning their attention to credential attacks.
In April 2024, Cisco’s security team warned that threat actors were overwhelming networks around the world with millions of login attempts.
Identity is now the new threat frontier – and role-based access control is your weapon to fight back.
What Is Role-Based Access Control?
Definition and explanation of RBAC
The role-based access control market is set to increase from USD $8.7 billion to USD $15.5 billion by 2027.
But what is role-based access control (RBAC)?
In role-based access control (RBAC), access rights to corporate resources are granted based on predefined roles.
This ensures users can fulfill their job functions, without being granted excessive permissions that increase security risks.
In a nutshell, identity management frameworks like RBAC hinge on five A’s:
- Authentication, which verifies user identities
- Authorization, which tightly governs what users can do once authenticated
- Administration, which enforces identity management policies
- Analysis, which identifies instances of fraudulent credential use
- Audit, which reviews the entire identity lifecycle to gauge the efficacy of an identity management system
Key features and components of RBAC
To understand RBAC, we’ll discuss its main features and four models.
First, we’ll start by answering the question, “What are the four models of RBAC?
They are:
- Flat RBAC: Here, users are assigned to predefined roles. One user can have many roles, and one role can have many users. This model has its roots in traditional group-based access control.
- Hierarchical RBAC: This model extends flat RBAC by incorporating role hierarchies, which allow senior roles to inherit the permissions of junior roles.
- Constrained RBAC: This model enforces Separation of Duties (SOD), which spreads responsibilities across multiple users to prevent conflicts of interest. For example, a restaurant employee may be assigned the roles of hostess and shift supervisor. However, they can’t perform both roles simultaneously
- Symmetric RBAC: This model provides comprehensive visibility into role permissions and is most suitable for complex organizational structures
Next, we discuss the key features and components of RBAC:
- Users: These are individuals assigned to roles based on their job functions.
- Roles: These are job functions such as “HR Manager,” “Content Marketing Manager,” or “Head of IT.” For example, Entra RBAC has over 65 predefined roles. There are roles to manage users, groups, and Microsoft 365 products like SharePoint and Exchange.
- Permissions: These are specific actions each role can perform, such as read, write, or delete privileges.
- Sessions: Users can perform actions pertaining to their roles for a set period.
- Resources: These are files and applications users can access, depending on their roles.
Protecting your business with RBAC
Does your business provide too much access or not enough?
According to the State of Identity Governance report, 70% of businesses say their organizations provide unnecessary or excessive privilege rights to employees.
This concern is well-founded, as insider threats have been rising at an alarming rate.
According to a 2024 Cybersecurity Insiders and Securonix report, 57% of businesses experienced 1-10 insider attacks in the last 12 months. In addition, up to 66% of organizations feel vulnerable or extremely vulnerable to insider attacks.
Protecting your business starts with applying the right rules – three, in fact.
So, what are the three primary rules for RBAC?
- Role authorization: Users must be authorized to assume a role.
- Role assignment: Users must be assigned to roles to perform transactions associated with them.
- Transaction authorization: A transaction can only be completed by users who possess the proper role.
Benefits of RBAC
Improved compliance with regulatory standards
RBAC merges compliance and security, ensuring that your business can meet the stringent requirements of worldwide data protection regulations.
It answers the question of “who has access to what” and provides a 360-degree control plane to facilitate transparency.
Efficient user provisioning and deprovisioning
When a new employee joins your company, they are assigned a role based on their job functions.
The role comes with predefined permissions, automatically granting the employee access to key applications, email accounts, and network resources.
In the RBAC system, automatic provisioning reduces the manual configuration of access rights for each new employee.
Similarly, when an employee leaves your company, automatic deprovisioning revokes permissions so they don’t retain continued access to your systems.
Reduced administrative overhead
With the rise in remote working, employees must have access to the necessary apps to do their jobs. Yet only 28% of businesses can offer this access within three working days of a new hire’s start date.
Most organizations (72%) take a week or even longer. More alarmingly, only 34% of companies say that they revoke access rights the day an employee leaves.
As a result, 56% of sales managers report that employees often leave with sensitive data such as customer contacts, contract details, and internal sales materials.
Currently, only 23% of businesses say that the doling out of access rights is automated, and only 35% report that revoking system access is automated.
With RBAC, automatic provisioning and deprovisioning eliminates manual oversight, reducing administrative burdens substantially and freeing your employees to perform higher-value business tasks.
Real-World Examples of RBAC
Case studies showcasing RBAC implementation
So, how does RBAC work?
To explain, let’s look at two industry case studies showcasing RBAC.
Healthcare
In the healthcare industry, regulatory compliance ensures high levels of patient care and more positive outcomes.
Compliance is the bedrock of a hospital’s reputation. Non-compliance with regulations like HIPAA comes at a high cost. With RBAC, employees are given the minimum level of access rights to excel in their roles. This ensures data privacy and security.
For example, physicians may have access to complete medical histories, test results, and treatment plans. Meanwhile, receptionists can only access patient appointment schedules or contact details.
Interfaith Medical Center, a healthcare organization with 50,659 employees and 1,459 branches worldwide, struggled with manual processes for configuring access controls.
To solve the issue, IT administrators set up automated RBAC management in Active Directory. As a result, they now manage 1000+ user objects, 750+ mailboxes, and 850+ workstations with just two DBAs and five help desk specialists.
Financial Services
Next, we look at Western Union, for an example of how RBAC might work in a financial institution.
Western Union is a major American financial services firm employing 5,000+ employees across the world.
Before implementing RBAC, Western Union’s IT staff used a manual process to assign rights to new employees. This led to inconsistent permissions, increased strain on IT staff, and the risk of non-compliance with regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and GDPR.
To solve the issue, Western Union IT staff transitioned to an IAM platform with RBAC capabilities. This immediately streamlined the provisioning of new employees.
As a result, the provisioning process for 50 new hires was reduced from 14 minutes to 2.5 minutes.
Success stories and benefits achieved through RBAC
When RBAC is successfully implemented, it can help reduce the complexity of access management while supporting a more secure digital workspace.
Take the example of LogRhythm, a security software company. In 2018, it faced many IT infrastructure challenges -- this irony was not lost on an organization offering leading-edge SIEM solutions.
LogRhythm wanted to offload its legacy perimeter security infrastructure and adopt more cutting-edge endpoint security technologies. The company also had a complex identity governance system that no longer served them.
They decided to deploy an identity centric Zero Trust approach to security with:
- Privileged Access Management (RBAC is a key component of PAM)
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- User and entity behavior (UAEB) analytics
- Micro-segmentation
- IAM (identity and access management)
The result? LogRhythm is now a major player in the SIEM space. In July 2024, it completed its merger with Exabeam to deliver the most talked-about SIEM and user & entity behavior analytics (UEBA) solutions in the cybersecurity industry.
Meanwhile, the Oncology Department at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital implemented RBAC as a security mechanism within the UK’s National Program for Information Technology (NPfIT).
Thus, only authorized personnel can access sensitive patient information, allowing St. Bartholomew to comply with the UK’s evolving but strict data privacy standards.
For more success stories, check out the NIST page on RBAC in various industries.
Industry-specific applications of RBAC
To understand industry-specific applications of RBAC, we’ll look at an example from the financial services sector.
JPMorganChase & Co is a major multinational financial services firm. It implemented RBAC for its suppliers and vendors to enhance security and comply with regulatory requirements.
These are the key components of JPMorgan's RBAC system:
- Ensuring that logical access policies, including those that support role-based or attribute-based access, also support segregation of duties and “need to know” access based on the least privilege principle
- Mandating regular recertification of access rights, which is a key component of RBAC in maintaining accurate role permissions
- Requiring multi-factor authentication for initiating any interactive privileged access session and external connectivity to the JPMC network
- Requiring SAML-powered federated identity management for JPMC access to supplier systems
- Separating the management of privileged and no-privileged accounts and requiring post-activity usage reviews
- Requiring a formal authentication and authorization policy to cover all applicable systems and include thresholds for lockout attempts and inactivity
Overall, implementing RBAC has helped JPMorgan ensure the integrity of its operations and maintain its competitiveness.
Implementing RBAC in Your Organization
Identifying roles and responsibilities
By now, you may be wondering, "How do I implement RBAC in my organization?”
At its heart, RBAC implementation should involve segregating access by role and establishing a baseline for that access. The key steps are identifying roles, defining access levels & permissions, and assigning roles to users. In the first step of identifying roles:
- Conduct a full assessment of your workforce. List all roles, with their responsibilities and objectives.
- Determine which industry standards you’ll reference to create your own RBAC policies. Will it be NIST, PCI DSS, ISO, FISMA, etc.?
- Create the guidelines and procedures that define how your RBAC policies will be implemented.
- When creating procedures, determine whether you’ll take a phased or prioritization approach. A phased approach is comprehensive in nature (changes are made system-wide). Meanwhile, the prioritization approach addresses your most critical access management challenges first.
- Determine how you can make implementation easy for everyone.
Defining access levels and permissions
Once you have a solid RBAC policy and all roles established, you’ll want to define access levels and permissions.
- List all digital and physical IT assets that need access controls.
- For each of these assets, determine the appropriate level of access.
- Create a matrix that maps roles to specific permissions.
- Customize roles and permissions to reduce the risk of overprivileged users, allow for real-time adjustments as roles evolve, and to comply with data privacy regulations.
For instance, a sales representative might need access to sales performance, CRM, market analysis, and sales activity reports. Meanwhile, an HR manager would require access to employee, payroll, training & development, attendance, onboarding, and benefits records.
Assigning roles to users
The final step in implementing RBAC is assigning roles to individual users:
- If you’ve chosen the phased approach, implement RBAC for a single department before introducing it company-wide.
- Review your current employee roster and match each employee to the appropriate roles.
- Educate employees about the new RBAC system and how it affects their access to resources.
- If you’ve been managing identities manually, consider automating identity lifecycle management to avoid inconsistent permissions when employees join or leave.
RBAC vs. Other Access Control Models
Comparing RBAC with ABAC
Today, many cybersecurity experts recommend combining RBAC with ABAC. This is because ABAC uses a more granular approach based on attributes, environmental conditions, and resource properties.
RBAC offers simplicity and ease of management. It’s ideal for enterprises where role structures are relatively stable. Meanwhile, ABAC provides more flexibility and fine-grained control. It can accommodate dynamic environments with complex security requirements.
Understanding the advantages of RBAC
RBAC offers several key advantages:
- Scalability: RBAC easily accommodates new entries as your business grows.
- Compliance support: With audit trails, RBAC allows your business to comply with data protection laws.
- Enhanced security: RBAC supports the Zero Trust framework, which includes least privilege and Just-in-Time access.
- Operational efficiency: By assigning permissions based on roles, RBAC reduces the likelihood of manual errors.
Combining both RBAC and ABAC allows you to keep your access policies up to date, reducing the attack surface for identity-related attacks.
Exploring alternative access control mechanisms
Besides RBAC and ABAC, other popular access control mechanisms include:
- Discretionary access control (DAC): This allows each resource owner to manage access to their resources, which can lead to inconsistent policies across an organization.
- Mandatory access control (MAC): This enforces access based on security clearances. MAC is often used in high-security or military environments. There are two main types of MAC. They are the Bell–Lapadula model (which prioritizes confidentiality) and the Biba model (which prioritizes data integrity).
Best Practices for RBAC Implementation
Regular role reviews and updates
To maintain the effectiveness of RBAC, be sure to regularly review roles and permissions to ensure they align with your business goals and security needs. For example, only authorized personnel should have access to business-critical applications, in compliance with data privacy laws. Failure to comply comes with hefty fines.
In 2023, Ireland's data protection authority imposed a USD 1.3 billion fine on Meta for GDPR violations.
You’ll also want to automate identity lifecycle management to prevent privilege creep or privilege escalation attacks.
Segregation of duties
Defining mutually exclusive roles ensures that no single person has excessive authority over mission-critical tasks.
You’ll want to create a role hierarchy to structure roles logically while maintaining Segregation of Duty principles.
This is especially important in the finance department, for example. Separation of duties prevents a user with a certain job function from performing another job function in the same department. So, a user can’t perform actions in both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, preventing insider sabotage or theft.
Auditing and monitoring access activities
Robust auditing and monitoring facilitate access pattern analysis and threat detection.
For example, is your login data protected? Leaving vendor-supplied default login configurations in place and incorrectly applying permissions increases the threat of a security breach. Thus, monitoring credential and access vulnerabilities is critical to identity-centric security.
At LastPass, your credentials and logins are protected in a SOC 2 Type II compliant vault.
If you’re looking for a business-class, affordable solution that prioritizes data security, sign up for a free, no-obligation trial of LastPass Business today.
