Workshop: IAAA: The Foundations of Access Control

1. Why IAAA Matters

Students are introduced to IAAA as one of the foundational models behind cybersecurity. This section explains how many real-world security incidents begin with failures in identity, weak authentication, excessive authorization, or lack of accountability.

Topics include:

• Why access control is central to cybersecurity
• The difference between “logging in” and being secure
• Common failures: shared accounts, weak passwords, over-permissioned users, and missing logs
• How IAAA supports confidentiality, integrity, and accountability

2. Identity: Who Are You?

This section focuses on how systems represent people, services, devices, and applications.

Topics include:

• User accounts, service accounts, device identities, and application identities
• Unique identity vs. shared identity
• Identity lifecycle: creation, changes, disabling, and removal
• Why identity is the foundation for everything that follows

3. Authentication: Can You Prove It?

Students learn how authentication works and why passwords alone are often not enough.

Topics include:

• Passwords, passphrases, MFA, tokens, biometrics, and certificates
• Something you know, have, or are
• Credential theft and phishing
• MFA strengths and limitations
• Authentication failures in real-world incidents

4. Authorization: What Are You Allowed to Do?

This section explains how systems decide what an authenticated identity can access.

Topics include:

• Permissions, roles, groups, and access policies
• Least privilege
• Role-Based Access Control concepts
• Privilege creep
• Difference between authentication success and authorization failure
• Why “the user logged in successfully” does not mean “the access was appropriate”

5. Accountability: What Happened, and Who Is Responsible?

Students learn why visibility, logging, and review are necessary parts of access control.

Topics include:

• Logs, audit trails, alerts, and monitoring
• Why shared accounts destroy accountability
• What useful security logs should answer
• Detecting suspicious behavior after access is granted
• Accountability as a technical and organizational control

6. Hands-On Labs

Labs reinforce the four parts of IAAA through practical activities.

Labs include:

• Lab 1: Identity and Account Review
• Lab 2: Password Cracking
• Lab 3: Authorization and File Permissions
• Lab 4: Accountability and Log Review

7. Defender Mindset Wrap-Up

The workshop concludes by tying IAAA back to practical security thinking.

Topics include:

• Asking better access control questions
• Recognizing risky assumptions
• Building repeatable access control processes
• How IAAA connects to Zero Trust, incident response, compliance, and everyday system administration