Access Control - Security Administration

The physical protection of information, personnel, software, buildings and other material resources are the first thing that should be assessed when looking into security, obviously there are unavoidable disasters such as natural disasters, man-made disasters and loss of electricity, air or water but most issues are preventable, by monitoring who has access to what and how much access they have, by locking rooms and PC’s, using person specific swipe cards, bolting computers to desks, having effective CCTV in place, and by having effective monitoring tools an IT team can keep a close eye on valuable data and prevent risks. Electronic security systems are designed to protect against unwanted personnel and they provide free roaming for wanted personnel. An electronic security system is a series of biometric locks, or a single biometric lock. A biometric lock is a system that can provide control of entry (or exit) within a designated area by the use of an electronic locking facility. The most common biometric lock is a pin pad system which is a keypad that requires the exact combinations of keys to open the lock, the keys are generally numbers but can be emphasised as letters, shapes, or sounds. Secondly and commonly are swipe cards which are encoded cards which hold information on the user, there is normally a swipe slot to enter a facility that have chosen to

Access control refers to the mechanisms that identify who can and cannot access a network, resource, application, specific action.

The analysis of the problem should take a day. At the analysis stage we determine the solution. The solution has been identified as the installation of the access control system. At this stage the system parts are identified; they include input, output, communication devices, power supplies, detection devices, intelligent panels, card readers, lock hardware, the actions and the response of the system in case of violation of the input requirements or failure of the system.

There many types of biometrics that are known to have success within organizations and government agencies. Some these types include smart card, fingerprint recognition, retinal/iris scanner, hand geometry, and facial recognition. All these types are known to be the most common types but one most also know that just like any other technology, each have their advantages and disadvantages. For example, smart card and fingerprint recognition are the most widely used due to them being cost effective and user friendly. The retinal/iris scanner are very secure but can be expensive to some. Although these technologies can be combined such as the smart card and fingerprint recognition, such as by having an individual insert has smart card into the reader which then will require that individual to place his/her finger on a scanner for a reading. Now let’s use the technologies in a example for access control of the facility that may be best to improve security while also considering cost. First is to implement the smart card which contains an integrated circuit chip. These smart cards work like an identification card but contain a circuit chip that allows for the storing of personal information, photograph of the person and biometrics like

Areas containing sensitive information or equipment should have limited access. The server room and document storage areas are examples of rooms to be designated as high security areas. As such, access to these areas should be limited. Security measures should be implemented to guarantee the security of these areas. These security measures can include locked doors, biometric scanners, magnetic swipe cards entrance logs and any other means designated by the Security Manager.

Access control has been in use before the growth of the technology world. It could involve a simple action as locking a door. A person locks a door to prevent entry to those who are not allowed or authorize to do so. The same can be said about the security involving databases and the controlling of who can have access and what can be accessed. As far as database security is concerned, there are various categories that are involved in access control. The four main categories of access control include: Discretionary, Mandatory, Role-based, and Rule-based access control.

Access Controls provide a mechanism, which allows an administrator to ensure that appropriate techniques are in place to control how users interact with an IT system. It provides an avenue where restrictions can be developed, specifying what a user can do, the resources they can access, and the functions they can execute on a system. It is aligned with the three main security principles; confidentiality, integrity and availability. This alignment ensures that data and resources within an IT system will remain confidential as required, the structure will remain intact and these objects will remain available, so as not to diminish the functionality of the system. Access controls that are incorporated into a security plan are

There are many security companies that have implemented biometric scanners, but majority of these systems are used to allow access to a secure building. Biometric systems are widely been adopted in many places. The systems are used to verify a person when they are entering secure buildings or places. Using biometrics for identity verification reduces the chances of unauthorized access ADDIN EN.CITE Shen19995(Shen & Tan, 1999)5517Shen, WeichengTan, TieniuAutomated Biometrics-Based Personal IdentificationProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of AmericaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America11065-1106696201999National Academy of

An access control model is a framework that dictates how subjects access objects. There are three main types of access control model mandatory access control, discretionary access control and role-based access control.

Since information security has become extremely important it is vital to ensure that information does not end up in the hands of an unauthorised person. Strict security measures need to be in place in order to control access. Typically there are two ways that a user can gain access to authorised information. Firstly, by looking at what you have or know and who you are (Du, BIOMETRICS: From fiction to practice, 2013) . The most commonly used way is

This chapter is basically based on access control in regards to computer information security. Access control is seen as the fundamental mechanism put in place to help make information security successful. Access control feature, in a particular system, will control how users can communicate, access and modify system resources and programs. Access control was described in this chapter as a very useful tool for the computer information security because it helps with ensuring that unauthorized person or program have no access to what they are not supposed to. Access control is regarded as the first line of defense to control, protect and monitor organization’s resource’s availability, confidentiality and integrity.

The access control system is a fundamental way of reducing security problems and control the access of people to a place. The purpose of the access control is to make sure that the right people are only granted the access to the place. The control system will ensure the privilege for people to access the building according to their rights and level. The control system monitor and record all the activities regarding the access control to lock and unlock the building, detect when a pass card is used and used when it has been declared lost. (Benantar, 2006)

Also, the initial format of familiar commands for grant and revoke of authorizations that are today part of the SQL standard. Next research proposals have extended this basic model with a variety of features, such as negative authorization, role-based and task based authorization temporal authorization, and context-aware authorization. This weakness makes unrestricted access controls vulnerable to malicious attacks, such as Trojan horses embedded in application programs. A Trojan horse is a program with an apparent or actually very useful function, which contains some hidden functions exploiting the genuine authorizations of the invoking process. Sophisticated Trojan horses may leak information by means of covert channels, enabling unauthorized access to data. A covert channel is a component or feature of the system that is misused to encode or represent information for illegal transmission, without breaching the stated access control policy. A large variety of components or features can be misused to create covert channels, including the system clock, operating system inter process communication primitives, error messages, the existence of specific file names, the concurrency control mechanism, and so on. The area of compulsory access control and multilevel database systems tried to address such problems through the development of access control models based on information classification, some of which were also incorporated in commercial products. Early compulsory

K.6.5 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]: Security and Protection – Access Controls, Authentication, information flow controls, invasive software.

In the present world, the Access Control System is used in all the places where it is intended that a system should allow the authorized persons to get in or leave the facilities as and when required and also to keep a record about these movements. Basically it determines who is allowed to enter or exit; similarly allowed to exit or enter even with the time when they are allowed to enter or exit. In the past, the same job could have been partially done by locks and keys. But there were number of limitations of the mechanical locks & keys. Firstly, it did not provide any restriction to the key holders to specific times & dates. Secondly, it did not provide any records of the key used to a specific door. Thirdly, the keys can be easily copied or transferred to the unauthorized person. Finally, when the key is lost, the authorized person losses his access to the protected areas and the locks must be re-keyed.