Users using the EmpowerID workflows or API may perform secure management of objects that exist in external systems as well as EmpowerID. Examples of external objects are Azure AD User Accounts, SAP Roles, File Shares, SharePoint sites, etc. Users may also manage objects that only exist in EmpowerID: people, management roles, Business Roles, etc. In both cases, a real-time authorization engine leveraging RBAC and ABAC security controls who may manage which objects and which actions or tasks they may perform against those objects. The system also handles logging, automatic approval routing, and workflow task generation in the event a user tries an action they are not authorized to perform.
The bottom tier of the 3-tiered EmpowerID RBAC model are the Access Levels which are EmpowerID’s Technical Roles. Access Levels define which actions, known as operation, and which native system permissions, known as rights, the recipient of the Access Level would be authorized to perform for any resources for which they have that Access Level. Access Levels can be directly assigned to people but most often are assigned to RBAC Actors in one of the higher tiers (i.e. Business Roles and Locations, Management Roles, etc.)
Operations are “protected bits of code” that are executed to perform these tasks in EmpowerID workflows or via its API. Operations can also be arbitrary not performing any action just serving as a placeholder for applications to query and determine access.
Rights are representations of actual permissions used in an external system which can be granted in EmpowerID via Access Level assignments. The EmpowerID enforcement engine will “push” these permissions out into the external system on schedule for any user to which they have been granted. Examples of rights include NTFS permissions for shared folders and mailbox acls in Microsoft Exchange.
The Persona Worksheet will help uncover all the unique combinations of operations and rights for various managed object types (aka Resource Types). These combinations may already exist in the shipping Access Levels management roles defined for each type of resource. If not, new Access Levels can be created or existing Access Levels modified.