What’s your game plan for security?

We begin the season with great enthusiasm. A coach will put together a game plan based on how they see the season playing out. But, as the season progresses the plan may need to be modified to suit the new conditions. Even within a game, the team needs to regroup and discuss strategy based on the state of play thus far.

We face a similar dilemma in our business. Plans made today may not be applicable tomorrow. We need to remain flexible and review our strategy on a regular basis. This is particularly true when it comes to metadata security.

SAS® provide a highly customizable security model, allowing organizations to define a model to suit their own unique requirements. Organizations spend many days (or weeks) determining a suitable model for their business – who are the users, what are the groups, do they require specific roles and associated capabilities, what permissions do they require on SAS related assets such as libraries, folders, reports, stored processes, jobs etc.

When a SAS environment is installed and configured, this security model is deployed in metadata. Once the model is in place, it needs to be managed. Are there processes in place to monitor security governance – ensuring users only have access to what they are supposed to? Are there regulatory requirements or business rules that must be adhered to? Is there a team/person responsible for this and are they suitably trained? What processes are in place to regularly monitor and manage it?

When the business changes, as it inevitably does, what is the impact to the original SAS security model? Does it adapt with those changes and do you feel secure knowing that your SAS assets remain protected?

Here at Metacoda, we make it easy for SAS Administrators to manage their SAS metadata security model efficiently. We present all the information relating to SAS Metadata security in a single location thereby enhancing visibility across the whole platform. Our Metacoda Plug-ins software help users to manage, review, audit, troubleshoot and document metadata security for your SAS platform installation via the ACT, ACE, User, Group, Role, Capability, Login, and Internal Login Reviewers. In addition, the Identity and Object Permissions Explorers allow administrators to quickly check effective permissions from the different perspective of users, groups and objects. These can be used to confirm assumptions and identify any roadblocks or gaps in metadata security.

How closely do you monitor and update your game plan for security?

For a small investment, Metacoda Security Plug-ins can help you stay on track. Contact us directly or visit our product page for more details. You can also register to download the free plug-ins and even get a free one-month evaluation license to try out the rest of the plug-ins with your own SAS metadata.