What policy should be implemented to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information?

Implementing a least privilege policy is essential for limiting access to sensitive information to only those individuals who absolutely need it to perform their job functions. By granting users the minimum level of access necessary, the organization can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access to critical data. This principle ensures that even if a user's account is compromised, the potential harm is limited because the attacker would only have access to a narrow set of resources.

In practice, this means that users are assigned roles with predefined permissions that restrict their ability to view, modify, or distribute sensitive information beyond what is necessary for their tasks. Regular audits of access rights and adjustments to permissions further enhance security by ensuring that privileges are aligned with current job responsibilities.

While other policies like separation of duties, job rotation, and data encryption play important roles in cybersecurity, they address different aspects of security management. For instance, separation of duties helps prevent fraud and errors by distributing tasks among multiple individuals, job rotation mitigates risk related to knowledge retention and insider threats, and data encryption protects data in transit and at rest. However, these measures do not directly target the unauthorized access issue as effectively as the least privilege principle does.