Hi everyone. I'm pretty new to using LogicGate and GRC platforms in general, so I appreciate this community. I'm helping my team set up a few programs for risk and compliance, and I'm already getting a bit tangled in the user permissions.
We have separate programs for vendor risk, incident reporting, and policy management. I need to make sure our department managers can oversee their own areas without seeing everything, and that our auditors have read-only access across the board. But when I look at the role settings, I'm not sure if I should be creating a new custom role for each program, or if there's a better way to handle it centrally.
Could someone explain the best practice here? I'd really love a concrete example of how you've set this up. For instance, do you create a "Vendor Manager" role and then assign it to the same people in each relevant program, or do you handle it differently? Also, how do you keep it all straight when you onboard new people?
I'm trying to avoid a situation where someone accidentally gets too much access, or where updating roles becomes a huge manual task. Any tips from your experience would be super helpful! 😅
I'm a security lead at a mid-sized fintech, and we've been running LogicGate in production for about two years across our vendor, policy, and risk assessment programs.
Here's a breakdown based on our setup and the hurdles we hit:
1. **Central vs. Per-Program Roles**: The best practice is a hybrid. You create a central library of custom roles (like "Department Reviewer" or "Auditor-Read Only") for common permissions sets. Then you assign those central roles *within* each specific program. This means you don't recreate "Vendor Manager" from scratch for every program; you assign the predefined "Manager" role to the person in the Vendor Risk program only. It's manageable for about 10-15 distinct permission sets before it gets fiddly.
2. **The Real Hidden Cost - Admin Overhead**: The per-user pricing is straightforward ($45-65/user/month for core modules), but the real cost is internal. Every new program or major process change requires a security admin to manually map and test those central roles to new workflows. For us, that's about 4-8 hours of configuration and validation work per new program launch.
3. **Where It Clearly Wins - Auditor Access**: Setting up your required "auditor read-only across the board" is its strongest point. You create one central "Auditor" role with global read-only permissions, then use the "Add to All Programs" feature with one click. It works exactly as advertised and auditors get immediate, uniform access without you touching each program.
4. **Where It Breaks - Granular "Oversight" Limits**: Your need for department managers to "oversee their own areas without seeing everything" hits a wall. The oversight is program-level. If a manager is in the Vendor Risk program, they see all vendors, not just "their" vendors, unless you build complex, custom hierarchies into the asset data itself. For true data segmentation within a program, you'll need to use custom fields and filters, which adds configuration complexity.
My pick is to stick with LogicGate's central role library for your use case, as it's built for exactly this multi-program, centralized control scenario. However, to avoid the manual update trap you mentioned, you need to define those 4-5 central role templates (like Department Manager, Auditor, Submitter) rigorously *before* you build any programs. If your company structure is very siloed where "own areas" means completely separate data sets, tell us, because that changes the advice.
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Great example, and you've hit on exactly the friction point. The hybrid approach user28 mentioned is key.
One concrete thing we do that might help: we prefix our central role names with the program code. So instead of a generic "Manager," we have `VR_Manager` for Vendor Risk and `IR_Manager` for Incident Reporting in the central library. It sounds minor, but when you're staring at a dropdown list assigning users, it prevents that moment of panic where you wonder "is this the *policy* manager or the *vendor* manager?" 😅
Your worry about onboarding is spot on. We solved that by building a simple spreadsheet matrix (Programs on one axis, Central Roles on the other) that maps which roles go where. New hire? Just find their row on the matrix and you've got their program assignments in 30 seconds. Saves you from having to remember the logic every single time.
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That 4-8 hour configuration estimate for a new program really hits home. We're just starting to scale and I'm already seeing that admin creep.
You mentioned the hybrid approach gets fiddly past 10-15 permission sets. What happens then? Do you have to switch to fully per-program roles, or is there another layer of management that helps? That's my next worry.
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