Here’s an important question: On your business’s network, who can see what?
Is your network wide open to every single employee? That’s the case at many small businesses, but it isn’t a good idea. If you’re operating this way, you’re exposing your business to lots of unnecessary risk.
This week we’re tackling the topic of network access control.
What Is Access Control?
Access control is technology that limits who can gain entrance to somewhere or something. The term is used commonly in physical security, where access control systems (like smart locks and badge scanners on a school or corporate campus) limit who can enter secure spaces.
Access control in the digital world applies those same principles, trading physical doors and locks for network locations and secure websites. With network access control, an administrator grants user accounts access to specific network folders and locations (think of them like digital rooms behind locked doors).
Just like door badge systems, network access controls can be assigned at the individual user level. So Employee A can have access to a certain set of spaces, while another Employee B has access to some (but not all) of those, plus certain others — and so on.
Why Small Businesses Need Network Access Control
So why does any of this matter for your small business? Let’s go back to our corporate campus example. There are good reasons to protect access to some spaces. You just don’t want any last person entering any and every room. Secure offices, utility rooms, server rooms, staff-only areas— there are good reasons to limit access to the people who are supposed to be there.
Your network and digital resources are the same way. You wouldn’t want any random customer or passerby to have open access to your entire network, including secure files, financial data, and so on. And unless you’re a very small operation, you can probably see why it isn’t a good idea for every single employee to have access to every single digital space.
This creates insider risk: employees could accidentally edit or delete files they didn’t ever need to see or open — or a disgruntled employee might even steal or destroy files on purpose!
Many Small Businesses Are Unprotected
The scary truth is that many small businesses don’t have any digital access control at all. And the ones that do, many of them don’t manage it actively. One audit found that 50% of surveyed businesses were still giving access to former employees that had left the company months ago!
Many small business leaders don’t think the risk is all that significant, or they worry that setting up access control will be too complicated or expensive.
But the truth is, setting up access control doesn’t have to be complicated. And the tools we use to do this unlock other powerful capabilities for businesses, too.
Access Control Best Practices
If you don’t have anything in place, getting started with access control might require an IT partner like us, or an internal IT group that knows how to handle endpoint management and network access. Whether you’re getting started for the first time or taking stock of how you’re approaching existing access control, these best practices will help.
- Watch for privilege creep: When staff change positions or take promotions, inventory their access and remove locations they no longer need.
- End access immediately: Set up processes so that when staff leave the company access is revoked immediately.
- Use least privilege: Make sure people have access to what they need — and that’s it.
- Consider temporary access: For temporary projects or unique situations, grant access that has an expiration date.
That’s it for this week. Got questions about how to make this happen for your business? Our team is ready to help.