EmpowerID Hybrid Access Control (RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC)

Defining and maintaining compliant access for a large organization can be a daunting task. Some types of applications and use cases are better suited to a more structured role-based approach, whereas others require real-time contextual decisions. RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC are three ways of managing authorization policies. Moreover, while both have overlapping qualities, individually, each one cannot cover all the necessary aspects of access control. However, for optimal, dynamic support of an IT organization’s needs, EmpowerID supports RBAC relational modeling. RBAC relational modeling provides the backbone or structure for defining an organization and its overall policies while leveraging the flexibility and real-time contextual nature of ABAC and PBAC to offer the best comprehensive solution.

Figure 1: EmpowerID’s Innovative Hybrid RBAC/ABAC/PBAC Model

EmpowerID’s sophisticated role and relationship modeling allow security architects to model the organization and its structure and policies, including segregation of duties policies to prevent undesired combinations of access. As illustrated in Figure 1 above, flexible attribute-based ABAC or PBAC policies support the centralized real-time decision point for applications that can call the EmpowerID API for authorization decisions. The ABAC/PBAC engine enhances or modifies the powerful RBAC engine's decisions, allowing their use only when greater flexibility or contextual information such as risk, location, and MFA type is required. By including the pre-calculated access results that the engine derives from complex RBAC policies that account for inheritance and even attribute-based queries, ABAC/PBAC policies are made much more potent.

EmpowerID Admin Guide

EmpowerID Hybrid Access Control (RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC)

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