Access Control

The importance of user role definition and access restrictions

Many of us have seen the cinematic masterpiece called The Lord of the Rings and can recall the scene where Pippin Took touches The Palantír (the glass orb looking thing with the eye of Sauron in it) and thus gave said villain an insight to his mind.

The bad news: Sauron knows everything Pippin knows. The good news: Pippin doesn’t know anything!

At first there is the panic when Gandalf thinks Sauron now knows everything, then there is the calmness of realising the ‘fool of a Took’ knows nothing that Sauron can use. If we compare that to real life: The panic of knowing your systems have been infiltrated, then the calmness of realising that the access is very limited and doesn’t cover any of the important parts of the IT system.

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