Authorization or authorisation (see spelling differences) is the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources, which is related to general

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthori ...

and

computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...

, and to

access control In the fields of physical security and information security, access control (AC) is the selective restriction of access to a place or other resource, while access management describes the process. The act of ''accessing'' may mean consuming ...

in particular. More formally, "to authorize" is to define an access policy. For example,

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...

staff are normally authorized to access employee records and this policy is often formalized as access control rules in a computer system. During operation, the system uses the access control rules to decide whether access requests from ( authenticated) consumers shall be approved (granted) or disapproved (rejected). Resources include individual files or an item's

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer progra ...

s, computer

device A device is usually a constructed tool. Device may also refer to: Technology Computing * Device, a colloquial term encompassing desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. * Device file, an interface of a device driver * Peripheral, any devi ...

s and functionality provided by computer applications. Examples of consumers are computer users, computer

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

and other hardware on the computer.

Overview

Access control in computer systems and networks rely on access policies. The access control process can be divided into the following phases: policy definition phase where access is authorized, and policy enforcement phase where access requests are approved or disapproved. Authorization is the function of the policy definition phase which precedes the policy enforcement phase where access requests are approved or disapproved based on the previously defined authorizations. Most modern, multi-user operating systems include role-based access control (RBAC) and thereby rely on authorization. Access control also uses authentication to verify the identity of consumers. When a consumer tries to access a resource, the access control process checks that the consumer has been authorized to use that resource. Authorization is the responsibility of an authority, such as a department manager, within the application domain, but is often delegated to a custodian such as a system administrator. Authorizations are expressed as access policies in some types of "policy definition application", e.g. in the form of an access control list or a

capability A capability is the ability to execute a specified course of action or to achieve certain outcomes. As it applies to human capital, capability represents performing or achieving certain actions/outcomes in terms of the intersection of capacity an ...

, or a policy administration point e.g. XACML. On the basis of the " principle of least privilege": consumers should only be authorized to access whatever they need to do their jobs. Older and single user operating systems often had weak or non-existent authentication and access control systems. "Anonymous consumers" or "guests", are consumers that have not been required to authenticate. They often have limited authorization. On a distributed system, it is often desirable to grant access without requiring a unique identity. Familiar examples of access tokens include keys, certificates and tickets: they grant access without proving identity. Trusted consumers are often authorized for unrestricted access to resources on a system, but must be verified so that the access control system can make the access approval decision. "Partially trusted" and guests will often have restricted authorization in order to protect resources against improper access and usage. The access policy in some operating systems, by default, grant all consumers full access to all resources. Others do the opposite, insisting that the administrator explicitly authorizes a consumer to use each resource. Even when access is controlled through a combination of authentication and access control lists, the problems of maintaining the authorization data is not trivial, and often represents as much administrative burden as managing authentication credentials. It is often necessary to change or remove a user's authorization: this is done by changing or deleting the corresponding access rules on the system. Using atomic authorization is an alternative to per-system authorization management, where a trusted third party securely distributes authorization information.

Related interpretations

Public policy

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public ...

, authorization is a feature of trusted systems used for

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

or social control.

Banking

banking A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

, an

authorization Authorization or authorisation (see spelling differences) is the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources, which is related to general information security and computer security, and to access control in particular. More f ...

is a hold placed on a customer's account when a purchase is made using a debit card or

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

Publishing

In publishing, sometimes public lectures and other freely available texts are published without the approval of the

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

. These are called unauthorized texts. An example is the 2002 '' 'The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe' '', which was collected from Stephen Hawking's lectures and published without his permission as per copyright law.

References