Security, Access Control, and Compliance
Domain 5 - Security, Access Control, and Compliance
This domain tests who can see and do what inside the CommCell, how credentials and encryption keys are handled, and which features support audit and legal requirements.
Core rules
- Users and groups are created in the CommCell and authenticated locally, against Active Directory or LDAP, or through single sign-on. Multifactor authentication can be enforced at the console.
- Authorization is role-based. A role bundles permissions such as backup, restore, browse and admin, and the role is associated with entities - clients, client groups, storage policies or the whole CommCell. Without an association, the permission applies to nothing.
- Security domains provide tenant isolation: users in one domain cannot see clients or jobs in another unless explicitly granted.
- Credentials for clients and storage are stored in the credential manager and referenced by accounts, not typed into each subclient.
- Encryption has layers: client-side or MediaAgent-side data encryption with keys managed by the CommCell key management, and library or media encryption applied by the drive. Losing the passphrase or key makes the data unrecoverable, including for support.
- Compliance features include retention locks that prevent deletion before a date, legal hold for investigation, audit trails of administrative actions, and content indexing to support search and eDiscovery.
Worked example
A regional team must restore only its own file servers. Create a role granting browse and restore but not backup or admin, then associate it with the client group containing those servers. Add the team's AD group as the security principal, not individual accounts, so joiners and leavers are handled by directory membership. Test by logging in as a team member and confirming the other region's clients are invisible, then check the audit trail records the association change.
Traps that cost marks
- Granting a role without an association and concluding permissions are broken.
- Using the CommCell administrator account for routine operations, which destroys accountability in the audit trail.
- Assuming media encryption protects data in transit as well as at rest.
- Believing a retention lock can be lifted by an administrator; it is designed so that it cannot.