Zero Trust for Physical Security

RightCrowd·19th October 2021

Hybrid work arrangements have fundamentally changed our relationship with the office. It’s now common for many people to work full-time but not go into the workplace every day. It means they might go into the office 3 days a week, or week on-week off.

Under these arrangements 24/7 physical access to corporate facilities, secure areas and the assets and information they contain is a security and compliance risk.

Hybrid work arrangements are now pushing companies to consider the implementation of least-privilege physical access with modern physical identity and access management platforms to get back in control of identity lifecycle management.

Understanding Zero Trust for Physical Security

Under the Zero Trust approach, the organization assumes that every user has zero access and that every physical access event (building access card swipe) should be assessed against the person’s role, security policy, regulations or safety protocols. The concepts can also extend to contractor and visitor access.

It requires that a worker is enabled with appropriate physical access to do their job, for the period they will be in the office. It follows that when those workers are not in the office, their physical access should be revoked to maintain safety and security.

This can be challenging for Security Operations teams who often rely on manual requests to make user access changes in the first place. Manual access management processes quickly become an obvious security and compliance risk. Many workers and contractors will maintain full access privileges to potentially secure facilities, assets and intellectual property that they dont need.

RightCrowd can help organizations implement Zero Trust through:

Physical Identity and Access Management
Provide a central source of individual physical identities and profile attributes for every person with physical access to facilities.

Apply policy-based access controls
Manage access rights to individuals based on roles, policy, attributes (such as health status or purchase orders) or requests.

Enforce least privilege physical access
Ensure that people only have the access they need to do their job for the period they are in the office.

Monitor and manage privileged access
Gain visibility of people with physical access permissions greater than normal users and manage them inline with regulations and policy to mitigate risk.

Identify and manage inappropriate physical access
Examine the health of access compliance, the adequacy of security controls and develop a proactive security posture.

Multifactor authentication
Deliver an extra layer of security for secure areas or open offices by making security permissions visible.

Audit and compliance
Enhanced reporting and analytics for use across audit and compliance, service and resource planning, business case and budgeting development.

Find out more about Zero Trust in our weekly webinar series, Back to the Office with RightCrowd’.

RightCrowd ensures that everyone on site has safe, secure and compliant physical access. Integrating HR, learning management or ERP applications allows RightCrowd to enforce policy or regulatory compliance through security systems.