Customer Needs Assessment

Types of Users

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.

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