Cloud Guidepost: Take control of user access with Citrix Cloud

Access control is fundamental to your organization’s security strategy. It enables you to:

• Dictate which users can access applications and data through policies
• Determine whether they are who they claim to be (authentication)
• Permit the appropriate level of access, including blocking specific actions like downloading, copying/pasting, and printing (authorization)

According to a recent CSO Online article, “Any organization whose employees connect to the internet — in other words, every organization today — needs some level of access control in place.”

Access control helps prevent confidential information like customer data, personally identifiable information (PII), and intellectual property from falling into the wrong hands. It’s particularly important if your organization has a hybrid-cloud environment, where apps and data reside both on premises and in the cloud. Adding to the complexity is the wide range of devices that people use to access corporate information.

Join Citrix on Wednesday, October 30, at 10 a.m. ET for the next Ask the Cloud Experts meetup, where you can ask our experts any cloud question you want and take away helpful tips on our topic of the month — access control.

Types of Access Control

There are four main types of access control:

1. Discretionary access control: The owner or administrator of the protected system, data, or resource sets the policies for who is allowed access.
2. Mandatory access control: People are granted access based on an information clearance. A central authority regulates access rights based on different security levels.
3. Role-based access control: Access is granted based on defined business functions rather than the individual user’s identity. It uses security principles such as “least privilege” and “separation of privilege.”
4. Attribute-based access control (ABAC): This dynamic method bases access on a set of user attributes and environmental conditions such as time of day, position, and location.

Organizations typically choose the method that makes the most sense based on their particular security and compliance requirements.

Cloud-based Access Control

Citrix Secure Workspace Access is an important tool for data security and IT efficiency. During our October ACE meetup, we’ll have a short presentation on some cool things you can do with Citrix Secure Workspace Access, including:

• Publish SaaS and web apps in the Citrix Workspace app to any device for stronger endpoint security. This helps prevent sensitive information from being shared/stored in unsanctioned apps and enables your IT team to control actions by users who have successfully authenticated to sanctioned apps.
• Provide a seamless user experience with single sign-on to SaaS apps and hosted apps.
• Control access to websites such as social media sites using web filtering.

Also, Citrix Secure Workspace Access helps your IT team by making it easy to assign SaaS apps to your workforce.

Answering Your Cloud Questions

The majority of the ACE meetup will be devoted to a live Q&A with a panel of Citrix experts:

• Belair Albahagwi, Customer Success Engineer
• Rajendra Soebhag, Senior Enterprise Architect
• James Richards, Lead Escalation Engineer
• Raghu Varma Tirumalaraju, Principal Technical Account Manager

The October ACE meetup is the perfect opportunity for you to ask your own cloud questions and hear about issues that concern other participants. Use this form to submit your questions in advance.