Defining Dynamics 365 Marketing Security Roles

Where there is data, there needs to be security.

‍Every business in the digital space essentially runs on data. It is pretty evident that when using a software tool that handles such large amounts of data, it needs to have the appropriate security measures. Dynamics 365 Marketing is a comprehensive tool for marketing that provides a unified platform to carry out much of your customer-serving operations, marketing management, and your business’s smooth running.

Dynamics 365 uses the concept of security roles to ensure secure access to all the data handled by the Dynamics 365 marketing platform. Here is a brief overview of these security roles in Dynamics 365 marketing, how they work, and how best you can implement them to help you keep your confidential data safe from unauthorized access.

What Is A Security Role In Dynamics 365?

Security roles are, in essence, access roles.

They define the various access levels you have in your organization, determining who gets to access what data. For instance, a marketing executive may have access to basic customer details such as name and contact number, but he may not have the authorization to edit the information. Similarly, a team manager may have access to employee data within his team but will not access another department’s employee data.

Establishing security roles ensures that data flow is controlled and helps you implement full control over all your data. It allows you to restrict data use and share only the relevant information and thus helps maintain the confidentiality of the data. The level of access provided defines every security role and the permissions such as read, write associated with a role.

Based on the access level, the security roles can be broadly categorized as:

• Global - Users with  Global access level are allowed to access all types of data records
• Deep- This level of access allows users to access any data within their respective business units along with any subsidiary units and all units contained within their business unit
• Local - Local level of access provides access to one particular business unit
• Basic- Basic access is the basic level of access each user has to manage and access their own records.
• None - This access level denotes that the user has no access to any of the data.

Along with access levels, security roles will also carry the information on the privileges or the permissions that the user can carry.

Privileges define the actions that the user can take with respect to data.

While privileges can be modified, they cannot be added or deleted. The privileges that can be assigned to a security role are:

• Create - Allows users to create new records depending on their access level
• Read - Allows read access to data within the user’s access level
• Write - Allows users to modify data depending on their access level
• Delete - Allows users to delete a data record depending on their access level
• Append/Append To - Allows users to relate one data record to another
• Assign - Allows users to assign ownership of a data record to another user
• Share - Allows users to share data records with another user depending on their access level.

What Are Dynamics 365 Marketing Security Roles?

To learn how to create security roles that suits your needs, head over to our blog article here.

Some of the security roles provided by default from Dynamics 365 marketing are explained below. These roles give good guidance on the kind of data operations that particular role involves and help you implement better access levels management.

Core Marketing Security Roles

Core marketing security roles consist of marketing professionals, marketing managers, marketing business app users, marketing services users, lead score modelers, and lead score viewers. Each of these types of users is given appropriate access to data records about their work area.

For instance, the lead score viewer will have read access to the score achieved by each lead. Some of these roles are critical to the workflow of the marketing team and must not be deleted. For example, the marketing services user is an internal role used to perform internal tasks.

Event Management Security Roles

Event management security roles are related to the user roles and workflows involved in planning and executing events within the organization. The roles are event administrator, event planner, and event management S2S inbound.

LinkedIn Lead Gen Security Roles

LinkedIn Lead Gen security roles are specifically designed for LinkedIn users as a primary medium for lead generation. The roles are LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Administrator, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Salesperson, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Salesperson/Surveys security roles are a part of the surveys package and include the Project Owner security role.

How To Assign Dynamics 365 Marketing Security Roles?

For any user to start using the Dynamics 365 platform and its features, a user account must be created for them, and proper licensing must be done prior.

Users can be given their access-level assignments and security roles only if their user licenses have already been issued.

But the more licenses issued, the more expensive it will be. So license management is a big part of efficiently assigning and managing security roles in Dynamics 365 marketing.

The next step is to provide the licensed user with a security role.

All security roles will have the basic access level by default. You can assign additional privileges, such as team privileges and assign them the appropriate access level.

As a rule, Dynamics 365 does not allow users to assign privileges more than their own to anyone else. As such, the System administrator holds the highest level of access level and role with rights to add, define, modify and remove rights of other users. You should also note that certain security roles should not be modified or deleted as they are critical to the internal tasks.

Along with the default roles provided, Dynamics 365 also allows you to specify custom roles that can be created easily by copying any existing role closer to the custom role you want to create.

Security roles are not just an exciting concept.

They are a much-needed measure that helps protect your data from unauthorized use and data leaks. That's why we wrote an article on security best practices. You can read about it here.

‍You need to be extra vigilant with your security management and make the best use of the extraordinary security measures provided by the Dynamics 365 marketing platform.

If you need help to assign your marketing security roles, make an appointment with our consultants.

Our security experts are well versed in real-world scenarios and help you find the best possible solution to manage security roles for your Dynamics 365 implementation.

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