Granular Authorization in Case Management: Key to Compliance

Dynamic Case Management (DCM) encompasses unstructured or semi-structured processes, serving critical sectors such as Insurance, Legal, and Healthcare. The privacy and compliance requirements for DCM solutions are complex. This complexity arises from two factors: the highly regulated nature of the industries utilizing DCM and the collaborative environment inherent in DCM solutions.

Generic or broad access controls are inadequate to address the specific security needs of DCM applications. Instead, DCM solutions require granular authorization to mitigate risks of data misuse, illegality, and non-compliance.

Enterprises using DCM solutions seek efficient methods to secure data systems and adapt swiftly to changing regulations. These solutions must comply with both overarching regulatory guidelines and granular authorizations at a micro (case or sub-case) level.

Granular authorization does not necessitate countless rules for every data interaction or task within a case. A more effective approach involves integrating security and compliance measures directly into the case models. By leveraging platforms that incorporate model-driven security with contextual (process-driven) authorization, DCM solutions can achieve granular authorization while maintaining agility.

Why Granular Authorization Matters

There are several key reasons why granular authorization is vital for Dynamic Case Management Solutions:

1. Nature of Dynamic Case Management: DCM is designed to manage unstructured processes, enabling knowledge workers and managers to make critical decisions dynamically. The next steps and decisions emerge during execution and depend heavily on context. In such fluid and collaborative environments, access to information and actions must vary among users; it cannot be overly broad, generic, or predefined.
   
2. Complexity and Scale: DCM solutions integrate with a variety of IT systems, products, and platforms to deliver significant business value. Consequently, it is important to safeguard the system as a whole, which requires defining correct security policies at various abstraction layers and managing/enforcing them at all relevant places.
   
3. Agility and Dynamic Changes: DCM solutions must support business-driven IT agility, requiring IT policies and enforcement to adapt frequently. The solutions must be easily reconfigurable to reflect changes within the business ecosystem, meaning security policies (including enforcement and monitoring) need to be updated each time rules or case models are modified.

Key Challenges in Enforcing Granular Authorization

Security policies and regulations are often articulated at a high level, focusing on organizational, business, information, legal, and human aspects but not specifically on IT. These abstract requirements need to be translated into actionable compliance and security policies that the IT security infrastructure can enforce.

The process of mapping these requirements generates rules and access controls that must be implemented in DCM solutions. This manual mapping is often time-consuming, maintenance-intensive, costly, and prone to errors. The easier alternative, role-based access control, is insufficient.

To effectively address these challenges, it is advisable to model DCM solutions using a platform that allows for the integration of security and authorizations during case modeling. This approach transforms often abstract security and compliance requirements into enforceable, low-level policies or rules. It also helps us overcome any shortcomings in enforcing appropriate security and access control that can lead to significant risks, including data misuse and non-compliance.

What Makes CaseFabric One of the Most Secure DCM Platforms

CaseFabric enables the creation of DCM solutions that automate even the most complex business processes and workflows. Built on a model that adheres to CMMN standards, the modeling process incorporates role definitions and access controls for various cases, tasks, and sub-cases. Let’s learn more about the features that establish CaseFabric’s security standards:

• Translating Business Needs to IT: Security and compliance require proper translation from abstract business concepts into IT infrastructure. CaseFabric, grounded in functional components and domain-driven design principles, facilitates this translation efficiently.
• Model-driven Development: As a low-code platform, CaseFabric allows enterprises to define case models and build solutions that conform to these models. Security features extend from this model-driven development approach, making it suitable for addressing abstract and domain-specific security requirements.
• Dynamic Modeling: The platform supports modification of case models to adapt to evolving business needs, seamlessly incorporating updates related to access and compliance rules.
• Contextual Security: Access to data cannot merely be defined by roles. For instance, a treating doctor should access a patient’s data only for the duration of treatment, unless shared by the patient or in an emergency. Such contextual deviations from the norm must be dynamically defined and managed within the DCM solution. CaseFabric automates these processes according to the context of each case, ensuring that security protocols align with the situation at hand.
• Authorization at Case Instance Level: Granular Authorization is best implemented at a case instance level. For example, treating doctors could become hospital patients. Then they can only access their own case as patients and not as doctors. The core engine of CaseFabric natively supports this, i.e. every individual case can have its own team of persons or groups that have access.

Granular authorization in DCM is critical for maintaining security and compliance, especially in highly regulated industries. Generic authorization frameworks are insufficient for DCM systems that navigate unstructured processes.

Ensuring security and compliance within DCM solutions becomes more efficient and effective through automated and systematic methodologies. These approaches guarantee consistent security, particularly in agile and regulation-driven environments.

Using a robust DCM platform not only fosters agility and adaptability within case management but also facilitates model-driven security—a structured approach to evolving security needs in response to changing concerns and compliance.

How are you addressing the changing rules and security needs of your business? Please share your thoughts with us at info@casefabric.com