Smart use of admin rights
Not every employee needs to be able to do everything. Yet in many organizations, a surprising number of people still have unnecessary privileges. They can change critical settings or even view sensitive data. And often, they don’t need to do so for their work at all.
Fortunately, restricting admin rights does not have to cause frustration. With the right approach, you can keep your team working smoothly and significantly reduce the risk of incidents.
Why restrict admin rights?
Cybercriminals like to target accounts with a lot of privileges. Because once they gain access, they can cause a lot of damage right away:
- Install malware
- Stealing or deleting data
- Take over other accounts
- Gaining access to servers or customer data
By limiting admin rights to those who really need them, you immediately eliminate that risk.
Advantage: you reduce the impact of a hack and make it much more difficult for hackers to strike.
Smart ways to tackle it
- Work with standard accounts
Give employees a standard user account without admin rights. Do they need a little more access? Then give it to them gradually. Is it something that is needed temporarily? Then it is best to do so with IT approval.
Tip: For IT staff themselves, you can work with a second account that does have admin rights. This also makes their daily use safer.
- Restrict admin rights to specific applications
Sometimes full admin access is not necessary. For example, someone may only need to manage printers or update software. In that case, you can assign rights tailored to that specific task.
Advantage: employees can do what is necessary without gaining access to sensitive parts of the system.
- Link rights to roles, not to individuals
Create a clear overview of who needs which rights for each position. New employee? Then you immediately know which profile fits. Position changing? Then you can easily adjust the rights.
This ensures that access is always tailored to the role, not the person. It also gives you a clear overview of the different roles and access rights.
- Keep track with regular reviews
Who currently has admin rights? And is that still necessary? By checking this regularly, you can prevent old rights from remaining in place. For example, after an internal shift or departure.
Tip: Make an inventory of the admin rights within your company. And make rights management part of your offboarding and onboarding process.
Would you like help with managing access rights in your environment in a smart way? We are happy to help you make it simple, secure, and workable.