Computer Sciences and Information Technology Access Controls Questions
Access controls are security features that control how users and systems communicate and interact with other systems and resources.
Directions: In a two- to three-page paper in APA format, discuss the importance of security access controls. Be sure to include responses to the following questions:
Why are access controls such as firewalls, VPNs, security configurations, and ACLs important?
How do these security access controls work together?
What challenges do access controls create?
How do we overcome these challenges during the security architecture or design phase?
Support your choices using scholarly journals and credible sources.
Access Controls Questions
Discuss the importance of security access controls?
The security access controls have great advantages in securing and safeguarding the logical and physical systems. First, the security access control enables the system and networks to conduct authorization and authentication to entities and users by accessing and evaluating their identification numbers, passwords, security tokens, biometric scans, and other authentication factors thus ensuring only authorized parties access the systems (Pearson and Benameur, 2010). Consequently, security access controls evaluate the operations and activities taking place within a network or security. In this regard, the security access control identifies the parties and individuals by verifying their applications, authorizing access levels and evaluating the set of actions associated with different parties or their IP addresses.
Why are access controls such as firewalls, VPNs, security configurations, and ACLs important?
The ACLs, security configurations, VPNs and firewalls have different benefits in regulating access to systems and networks. In this regard, the access controls act as deterrence criminal operations and protection from theft. The access controls are effective in averting burglary, theft, and vandalism by adopting different precautionary measures (Pearson and Benameur, 2010). The system monitors the activities in the system making it easy to detect and prevent criminal operations. Furthermore, access control plays a vital role in protecting members of staff thus increasing employee safety. The access controls make it possible to regulate people’s access to places of work thus providing a safe working environment.
How do these security access controls work together?
The security access control operates by authentication information using access control devices using information held by the potential users such as PIN, pass-phrase and password, something the user has such as smart card or key and something the user is such as fingerprint and facial recognition (Bellovin and Bush, 2009). In this case, the different access control thus conducts the authorization and authentication of the entities and users by evaluating the login credentials such as security tokens, biometric scans, personal identification numbers, passwords, and other authentication factors. The multifactor authentication requires different authentication factors to provide a multilayered defense in the course of protecting networks and systems. The different access control identifies the person accessing the system or a network by the verification of the applications or the person the later authorizes the access level and set of actions related to the IP address and username. All the access control work hand in hand to regulate and minimize the risk of unauthorized access to logical or physical systems.
What challenges do access controls create?
Different challenges arise from the use of access controls thus compromising or endangering the security of systems or networks. The access controls are affected by the challenges of inconsistency making it hard to effectively protect data within a system (Bauer et al., 2009). The inconsistencies arise in the implementation affecting the manner data is transported within an organization through mobile wi-fi, servers and cloud storage thus compromising the security of an organization. On the other hand, access controls have the challenge of inflexibility such that it cannot adapt to the changing technology thus making it hard to handle increase insecurity and risks.
How do we overcome these challenges during the security architecture or design phase?
The access control security architecture needs to have detection mechanisms that alert the relevant parties if there are challenges or issues experienced such as the inconsistency and insecurity issues this fact ensures that problems can be effectively handled (Kim et al., 2010). On the other hand, the design architecture needs to ensure that the system is flexible to enable it to adapt to changes.
References
Bauer, L., Cranor, L. F., Reeder, R. W., Reiter, M. K., & Vaniea, K. (2009, April). Real life challenges in access-control management. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 899-908). ACM.
Bellovin, S. M., & Bush, R. (2009). Configuration management and security. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 27(3), 268-274.
Kim, T. H. J., Bauer, L., Newsome, J., Perrig, A., & Walker, J. (2010, August). Challenges in Access Right Assignment for Secure Home Networks. In HotSec.
Pearson, S., & Benameur, A. (2010, November). Privacy, security and trust issues arising from cloud computing. In 2010 IEEE Second International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (pp. 693-702). IEEE.
