Leveraging AI to Fortify User Role Security

The element of user roles is a big deal in the world of cybersecurity. Assigning incorrect user roles can grant unauthorized privileges to sensitive resources. This will increase security risks across various dimensions.

Fortunately, the new exciting world of AI has made it possible to establish robust user role security. If you want to adopt a no nonsense approach towards this importance, then AI is your dependable ally. 

Why AI? Let’s discover together. 

What is user role security?

User role security is the comprehensive security system that controls how different roles interact with different resources within a network or computing system. It works by allocating different permissions to different user roles.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the key aspects:

• User Roles: These are defined categories that indicate a user’s function or position in the system. A typical company can have many roles, such as administrator, editor, viewer, etc.
• Permissions: These are specific actions a user role is allowed to take in the system. This could be reading files, editing data, or adding new users.

The assignment of roles to users and permissions to roles ensures that each role only has access to the data and features they need to do their work. Nothing more.

This is important because of the following reasons:

• Enhance Security: Restricts unauthorized access to sensitive information by limiting what each user can see and do.
• Streamline Workflows: Since  each user only sees the features relevant to their tasks, the system is much easier to use because a user is not overwhelmed by the need to navigate unnecessary resources that do not relate to their work.
• Tailored Experiences: Different user roles can have different interfaces or views within the system.

There are many areas that organizations can embed comprehensive user role security.

For example, corporate databases restrict access to resources like financial data for the Finance department, employee records for HR, and marketing data for the Marketing team. 

Social media platforms for company accounts might have community managers posting updates, while executives review and approve them. 

E-commerce websites allow customers to purchase products while inventory managers update stock and marketing teams manage promotions. 

Content management systems can have editors from different departments who  create content specific to their area, while a webmaster or IT team manages overall publishing rights. 

Project management tools will provide team members with access to their assigned tasks within a project, while project managers will oversee everything, including assigning tasks, tracking progress, and controlling access for different user roles. 

The rigid nature of the traditional role based user access meant that activities such as assigning roles are manual. But the entry of Artificial Intelligence is changing this for the better.

Also Read: AI for Knowledge Management

How to leverage AI to strengthen user role security

There are several ways to achieve this with the overall aim of enhancing user role security and taking it to the next level. Here are the key approaches:

1. Use AI to optimize user profiling and assignment of roles

Artificial intelligence algorithms are effective at analyzing massive user data to establish user patterns that can be used to better understand users. 

This understanding is important because it provides a data-driven basis for assigning roles. For instance, a user who shows signs of posing risks will be assigned basic permissions while a ‘healthy’ user will be assigned advanced roles.

2. Predictive user role security

AI utilizes machine learning models alongside historical data to effectively forecast potential threats that would not be detected in the traditional user role security systems. 

This is possible because AI can effectively analyze access logs at scale and spot signals that could point to compromise or indicators of compromise (IOCs). This is important because it then triggers prompt response to potential breaches of security.

The ability to just analyze patterns in real time means that AI is capable of anticipating potential risks and trigger measures that fortify user role security against threats, round the clock.

3. Context-based access control

AI allows context to be introduced into decisions that control user roles. To do this, we design algorithms that are capable of considering comprehensive factors that then inform what level of activities can be accepted. Some of these factors include:

• User behavior
• Time of access
• The type of device used

If any of these factors deviates from the normal, then the user role control system may restrict some roles or initiate further authentication measures, depending on the rules.

4. Adaptive user role policies

The beauty of AI systems is that they are ever learning. In fact, the whole concept of AI is anchored in learning, continuously getting new information. Ths new information is then channeled into the algorithms that eventually make the systems perform better.

When this strength of AI is brought into user role security, it means that the systems will learn the user role policies and adapt to them. Whenever the policies change, the system is fed with the changes. Over time, the system adapts to the policy framework to a point where it can make decisions autonomously as roles change with time. For example, if a junior accountant is promoted to a senior level, the AI-driven user role system will automatically adjust the role and permissions of the affected staff.  

This way, users are able to seamlessly switch between roles without having to keep waiting for manual intervention as is the norm in traditional user role security. 

5. Role discovery

AI can be very useful in discovering roles. For example, in a typical organization, several roles will normally have the same level of permissions. Instead of having to keep on assigning the permissions on a case by case basis, an AI driven system can identify those roles that have the same level of permissions and apply them in real-time.

This saves time while ensuring the right permissions are assigned to different roles. Imagine a scenario where once a role is assigned to a new user, the permission is assigned automatically. Now, scale this to thousands of users and visualize how much time can be saved and the convenience that comes with it. Same is also true when different roles are updated at a massive scale.

6. Enhanced reporting

Traditionally, generating reports involve lots of manual sifting through massive data and many users to fish out pointers such as patterns that may highlight potential threats.

AI automates this process, meaning the analysis and generation of reports is a continuous real-time activity. Not only that, AI will prioritize areas that need urgent attention and even predict vulnerabilities. Remember all this is happening in real-time, which is what any good security system should offer in the modern business environment.

Concerns around the use of AI in user role security

While insanely popular, Artificial Intelligence is still in its early days. There’s still a lot that needs to be done to guarantee that the data the AI models rely on are up to dae.

As an organization, you need to tackle any concerns. In particular, concerns around ethics and bias should be handled with a lot of understanding.  

Also Read: How to Handle Challenges in AI Adoption

Key considerations for successful implementation of AI in user role security

There is no doubt that AI is emerging as a strong force in the user role security sphere. However, it’s critical to remember that the quality of implementation is the foundation of success.

Observe these basics to help you get the implementation right:

• Use quality data: AI algorithms cannot work alone. They are indeed as good as the data that is presented to them. So you want to make sure the data is high quality, from user activity to logs and more.
• Transparency: AI-driven decisions should be transparent. This allows users and security teams to understand what is going on and the rationale behind it.
• Watch out for falses: We can never rule out the potential for a false sense of security even in an AI-driven system. Keep the algorithms under constant checks to ensure they are giving  the true security position, not a false sense of security.
• Data privacy: Since AI-driven user role security is powered by personally identifiable information, it’s important to ensure that this information is safeguarded from cyber criminals.
• Overall human oversight: While AI is great, it should not be deployed with the intention of completely replacing human judgment and oversight of systems. At the end of the day, these are still computer systems that are prone to the typical hitches that could plunge critical company resources to a devastating downtime. As such, it’s important that security professionals are constantly overseeing the systems and be ever ready to intervene whenever the need arises.

Also Read: AI-Driven Knowledge Base

Getting started with AI for user role security

Deploy an AI system that in addition to helping to strengthen the aspect of user role security, it provides features that make it easy for your company to meet its obligations in relation to compliance.

Equally important, remember that user role security also has an element of efficiency. This means that the control system should enhance the efficiency of all users roles. For example if one has permissions that allow them to edit end of year financial reports, they should be able to do this efficiently without being derailed by security checks. In other words the security component of user role management should work like a stealth soldier, not an ‘all around and about’ one who keeps interrupting users to verify this or that. After all, this is the core strength of AI – to make things smooth for users.

Conclusion

The use of AI to bolster user role security is a huge step in the war against threats. Artificial Intelligence promises numerous benefits, including enhanced user profiling and assignment of roles, predictive user role security, context-based access control, and much more. 

Need to learn more about AI Domain and how your organization could implement Artificial Intelligence to full effect for a strengthened user role security? Let’s Talk.