4.7.1 Use Cases

Security use cases define the practical application of security controls to maintain integrity, availability, and protection against unauthorized access within automated environments.

Provisioning and Deprovisioning - User Accounts: The lifecycle management of credentials. Provisioning involves creating accounts and assigning initial permissions, while deprovisioning ensures access is revoked immediately upon termination to prevent "orphan accounts." - Resource Allocation: Automating the setup of virtualized instances or containers. Security focus is on ensuring only the necessary services are enabled (hardening) during the initial build. - Centralized Authentication: Managing all credentials in a single unified database. This enables Single Sign-On (SSO), where one set of credentials allows access to multiple enterprise resources, simplifying the deprovisioning process.

CI/CD and DevSecOps - Continuous Integration (CI): The practice of merging code changes into a central repository frequently. Security use cases include automated Static Analysis (SAST) to find vulnerabilities in source code. - Continuous Deployment (CD): Automating the release of code to production. Security focus is on Infrastructure as Code (IaC), ensuring that environment configurations are version-controlled and vetted. - Guard Rails: Automated policy enforcements that prevent developers from making high-risk mistakes, such as accidentally leaving an S3 bucket public or hardcoding API keys into a script.

API Security - Authentication and Authorization: APIs often use Something You Know (API keys) or tokens (OAuth) to verify identity. Unlike human users who might use a password, APIs require machine-to-machine validation. - Data in Use Protection: APIs process data in volatile memory (RAM). This "data in use" is vulnerable to memory scraping or shoulder surfing if displayed on a dashboard. - Throttling and Rate Limiting: Security use cases to prevent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks or brute-force attempts against API endpoints.

Role-Based Security Controls - Privileged Users: Individuals with elevated access (e.g., System Administrators). They require specialized training and stricter monitoring (logging) compared to standard users. - Data Owners: Responsible for classifying data and determining who has the "rights, privileges, and permissions" to access it. - Executive Users: Often targeted by high-level social engineering; they require training focused on business impact and sophisticated phishing (whaling).

Quick recall - Something You Know: Single-factor authentication relying on memory (Passwords/PINs). - SSO: Centralized model where a single credential set grants access across the enterprise. - Data in Use: Information residency in RAM or CPU; highly vulnerable to shoulder surfing. - Provisioning: The process of assigning permissions and resources to an entity. - Guard Rails: Automated constraints that maintain compliance without stopping the development workflow.