| Open Group Technical Standard |
|---|
| Authorization (AZN) API |
| Document Number: C908 |
| ISBN: 1-85912-266-3 |
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A generally accepted definition of Authorization is "the granting of access rights to a subject - for example, a user, or a program." Within this definition, we need to distinguish between the administrative act of asserting that a subject should be granted access rights (which we define as a "set of privilege attributes"), and the operational (control) act of allowing a subject to access a resource after determining that they hold the required set of privilege attributes.
This Technical Standard defines a generic application programming interface (API) for access control, in systems whose access control facilities conform to the architectural framework described in International Standard ISO 10181-3 (Access Control Framework).
The API defined in this document does not provide for privilege attribute administration, although it does provide facilities which allow a subject to control which of its privilege attributes are used to authorize a particular access request (such facilities are often called "least privilege").
Motif®, OSF/1®, UNIX®, and the "X Device" are registered trademarks and IT DialToneTM; and The Open GroupTM; are trademarks of The Open Group in the U.S. and other countries.
Members of The Open Group Security Program Group have contributed to this specification by reviewing drafts. In particular, thanks are due to the representatives from the following companies:
The following documents are referenced in this Technical Standard:
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