The financial cost of a data breach is often catastrophic. In 2023 alone, IBM reported the average cost of a data breach was $4.45 million globally. Of these breaches, a significant 82% involve human error, privilege misuse, or social attacks like phishing. This is where role-based access control (RBAC) comes into play, offering a way to minimize such risks by ensuring users only have access to assets necessary for their roles.

Formalized by NIST in 1992, RBAC has long been a standard approach to managing access to critical assets and data, particularly for enterprises managing a large pool of employees. By limiting unnecessary access to critical systems and data, RBAC effectively shrinks the attack surface, reducing the likelihood of privilege escalation and lateral movement by malicious actors.

But as cyberthreats become more sophisticated, many have raised questions about the effectiveness of RBAC, with some saying RBAC is problematic and others even claiming RBAC is dead. Research and consulting firm Forrester, however, reports otherwise, noting that companies who adopt RBAC “reduce the risk of internal data breaches by up to 50%.”

So, is RBAC still valuable in 2024?

RBAC in a Distributed Workforce

As remote and hybrid workforces grow, so does the value of RBAC become more pronounced. Managing access permissions across various departments and locations is complicated, but RBAC simplifies this by providing a structured, scalable mode: Instead of managing permissions individually, IT administrators assign predefined roles to users based on their job functions.

This is valuable to organizations across the board, whether it’s in healthcare, manufacturing, or banking. Large companies like Google and Amazon, as well as startups like WebWork continue to find RBAC a useful guardrail in protecting their own critical data assets, as well as their clients’. For instance, companies with remote teams using the WebWork timetracker platform across geographies and time zones can rest assured that the platform only gives employees access to privileges and company assets depending on their roles in the organization. 

“With the growing complexity of modern enterprises, especially with remote teams, RBAC allows us to keep control of who can access what data in a very structured way,” says Vahagn Sargsyan, Founder and CEO at WebWork.

“We’ve built RBAC into our productivity platform to help organizations enforce access control across distributed teams, mitigating the risk of insider threats and external attacks,” Sargsyan adds.

This perspective is backed by data from Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, which found that “61% of breaches involve compromised credentials.” RBAC’s emphasis on restricting unnecessary access can prevent hackers from gaining a foothold within systems.

The Two-Fold Advantage

According to John Kindervag, creator of the zero-trust model and Senior Vice President at ON2IT: “Role-based access control is foundational to any zero-trust architecture. It’s about limiting access to the minimum necessary and verifying everything continuously. Without RBAC, you’d lose one of the key pillars of zero-trust, which is controlling who has access to which data.”

Kindervag‘s thoughts underscore how critical RBAC has become for businesses adopting more advanced cybersecurity strategies, such as zero-trust. By focusing on access control, RBAC minimizes the risk of internal misuse and external exploitation.

As cyberthreats grow more advanced, organizations need security solutions that not only defend against attacks but also limit the potential fallout. RBAC, with its structured access management, is a proven method for achieving that. From reducing the risk of privilege misuse to cutting the attack surface by half, RBAC offers a scalable, manageable solution for organizations of all sizes.

It isn’t just about controlling access, but also about future-proofing your business in a digital world where the stakes have never been higher.

For many experts, the verdict is that RBAC remains a big deal because it delivers on two crucial fronts: It keeps organizations secure while enabling them to remain agile and innovative. In an era of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, that’s a combination that’s hard to beat.