Improved data governance for government agencies
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Streamlining and Strengthening Entitlement Management with Microsoft Cloud and Dynamics 365
In many government environments, every bit of information is on a “need to know” basis. Of course, not everyone needs to know every bit of information an agency or department might have at its disposal.
Like most organizations, government agencies need to effectively control who can and cannot access particular data, as well as how they can access it. But for government agencies, controlling the flow of information can be particularly challenging due to added layers of oversight—and compliance requirements on access to both structured and unstructured sensitive data.
To address these unique challenges, government agencies are searching for new ways to simplify and enforce policies about what information can be accessed, by whom, and on which platforms and devices.
RBAC presents new opportunities
Over the past decade and a half, no-code, low-code platforms have become ubiquitous. And the widespread adoption of these platforms easily made its way into government. For years, government agencies and departments have relied on the built-in functionality of these systems—including customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and other mission-critical applications, with occasional spending on integration with third-party tools or other custom-built features—to support their data governance policies.
The problem is, some of the most important and sensitive information an agency has—intellectual property, personal data, banking information, or project information—resides in these systems. Some security controls can make protecting that data tricky, due in large part to limited options for permitting access across individual employees, use cases, or records.
Most systems provide role-based access controls (RBAC) that include field-level security—meaning records or specific data can be locked down by employee rank (director, manager, field rep) or by department. They don’t, however, provide many options for restricting access to individuals irrespective of titles, nor for locking down certain areas of records or parts of a sensitive project. Instead, restrictions must be managed manually. Considering the sheer volume of data and number of employees agencies have, that can be a time-consuming and daunting task.
Over time, RBAC becomes extremely difficult to manage. IT teams have to manually add or remove individual users when employees join or leave the organization. They have to change access rules for special projects and modify rules in response to other special requests. Some organizations have even accumulated (and continue to support) more roles than employees—introducing new and unnecessary risks and complexities in managing access.
Even worse, in a last-ditch effort to protect highly sensitive information, some agencies opt to set up multiple instances to ensure complete separation of users from data. But doing so is neither a long-term solution nor a scalable one. The resources and time needed to handle multiple systems can explode CapEx and OpEx budgets.
Simple, automated, and secure solutions from the Microsoft partner community
Government organizations searching for alternatives to high-risk, high-cost, and high-maintenance approaches to data access management can benefit from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Government for Entitlement Management.
Developed in conjunction with Microsoft partner NextLabs, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Entitlement Management is a data-centric, integrated security solution that provides a more granular level of information governance to safeguard the most sensitive information.
With an attribute-based policy platform, the NextLabs solution automates security controls to ensure only authorized users have access to sensitive data. It accomplishes this by extending base-level security controls to include field-level security and access controls to certain areas of records, or parts of a sensitive project, based on granted rights.
Specifically, Dynamics 365 performs enforcement dynamically at runtime. That is, it continuously and automatically evaluates and enforces data access policies to include:
- users accessing data from data rich dashboards
- search queries
- data views
- users assigning records to other users
- data accessed via Web services
Dynamics 365 Entitlement Management also features row-level data filtering—to set data access based on the location, department, position, project assignment or any other user attribute. At the same time, field-level data redaction and masking capabilities automatically redact sensitive information in each row of a record, based on the user’s profile, to ensure they only view and access data they’re authorized to see.
By centralizing and automating policy execution, administrators can maintain and easily keep track of role, permission, and data ownership assignments. And they can do so even as users move between departments, territories, locations—or when other data like accounts, campaigns, or support cases are modified.
This level of granularity and control eliminates time-consuming and expensive code development or management. In so doing, it increases business agility and frees up valuable IT resources to work on higher-value initiatives—without sacrificing the safety and security of essential or proprietary information.
Information is the lifeblood of every organization. But not all information must or should be accessible at all times, by all employees. The complexity of data governance is amplified in the public sector—due to the complex matrix of users, data, devices, and clearance levels. NextLabs Entitlement Manager for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a dynamic authorization technology that delivers additional layers of protection—with fine-grained access control to secure critical data. What’s more, it automates security and compliance policy enforcement to enable secure information sharing across an organization.
Contact us for more information or questions.
