Security Solutions

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Customer Needs Assessment

Types of Users

For network access, one size does not fit all users. Many different types of

users need to access the company network, and these users all need varying

resources and services. When you are planning access control for a network,

it is helpful to begin by listing groups of users who share the same general

characteristics and need the same network resources. For example, you might

start with these common groups:

■ Employees

■ Temporary workers

■ Guests

Employees

For employees, you might further group users by location and department.

These groups typically work well because employees in the same location and

department usually require access to the same network resources and have

the same basic security requirements. For example, if your company has

multiple offices, you may group users first by location—such as the Berlin

employees and the Glasgow employees. Then, in each location, you might

group employees by department, so that you have groups such as:

■ Berlin_marketing

■ Berlin_accounting

■ Berlin_executives

■ Berlin_developers

■ Glasgow_marketing

■ Glasgow_sales

■ Glasgow_executives

Depending on the size of your company and the tasks users are performing,

these groups may be too general still. That is, the groups may include users

whose network access needs are too diverse to control through one policy. In

this case, you may need to further subdivide the groups.