Seven Tips for Successful B2B Collaboration

Organizations need to view security as a business enabler that gets the right people to the right resources rather than simply as a means of shutting people out. That approach lets organizations respond to change quickly and make rapidly expanding user populations productive faster. Here are seven tips for making security work for smoother collaboration.

• Extend the power. The more resources that can be safely shared, the more companies can collaborate and act as true extended arms of business.
• Automate to collaborate. Replace manual procedures for creating, managing and terminating accounts with an automated system that maintains security while ensuring that all users receive appropriate access to the resources they need.
• Enforce corporate policies. Develop security and administrative policies before collaboration. Have a system in place that automates workflow processes to ensure all polices are enforced as access rights are created, maintained and terminated.
• Delegate administration. Delegate the authority to maintain user status within business partnerships, allowing verification, approval, audit, reconciliation and modification. For example: “I grant authorization to individuals with role X in organization Y to access resource Z.”
• Safely open the back door. For effective collaboration, users need access to data in real-time for resources behind the firewall, such as ERP systems for supply chain collaboration and CRM systems for better customer management.
• Know the users. Have a central repository from which to retrieve data on the individual users accessing back-end applications from outside the firewall, including data on business partner employees.
• Protect privacy. While granting access, be sure to control who goes where in order to protect individual privacy and still satisfy specific government regulations in an auditable fashion.

Source: Access 360, Irvine, Calif.