access privilege
163496·updated Aug 30, 2026A specific permission, right or authorization granted to a system account that determines which system resources, functions and data the account may access or act upon. Access privileges are specified per account or per account type, alongside the account's authorized users and its group and role membership, and are expected to reflect the requirements stated elsewhere in a system's security plan. Under the principle of least privilege they are restricted to the minimum necessary for an account's assigned tasks, and they are reviewed and revoked as part of account management. The phrase is a term of art in access control rather than the loose sum of "access" and "privilege": it names the enumerable unit of authorization that account management specifies.
Source
Organizations may choose to define access privileges or other attributes by account, type of account, or a combination of both. Other attributes required for authorizing access include restrictions on the time of day, day of the week, and point of origin. When defining other system account attributes, organizations considerthe sentence this term was read in
generalized from a web lookup of the quoted expression at proposal time Verdict: term of art.
- least privilege - Glossary | CSRC
- AC-2 - NIST 800-53 r5 Control Explorer
- 03.01.01 Account Management - NIST SP 800-171r3
- A Guide to Least Privilege Access
A definition generalized from search results is a draft to react to, not provenance. Confirm it against an authority document before this term is verified.
A web lookup ran when this term was proposed
"Access privileges" in information security and compliance refers to the specific permissions, rights, and authorizations granted to a user account (or class of account) that define what system resources, functions, and data that account is permitted to access or act upon. The term is used in the context of the principle of least privilege, by which a system restricts the access privileges of users to the minimum necessary to accomplish assigned tasks. As used in the quoted NIST authority document (AC-2, Account Management), the specification of access privileges reflects the requirements in other controls in the security plan and is defined per account or account type. The phrase is a recognized term of art: it is not merely the sum of "access" + "privileges" used loosely, but rather a specific, recurring construct in access-control frameworks governing what an authenticated identity is authorized to do within a system.
Advisory only. A term this product ships is defined by an authority document, not by a search result.
Proposed during multiword review of this document in the CKI mapping queue.
Attested in
Classifications
Entity Type
Sensitivity
Information Class
Variants
- plural
- access privileges
- possessive
- access privilege's
- pluralpossessive
- access privileges'
Framework definitions
- §1 · attested_usage_reviewer_confirmed
- No definition is given in NIST SP 800-171r3. The term is attested in use at 1 citation in that document; a definition is pending curation.Increment 2: attested in 800-171r3 without a glossary definition.
- §1 · web_lookup_draft
- A specific permission, right or authorization granted to a system account that determines which system resources, functions and data the account may access or act upon. Access privileges are specified per account or per account type, alongside the account's authorized users and its group and role membership, and are expected to reflect the requirements stated elsewhere in a system's security plan. Under the principle of least privilege they are restricted to the minimum necessary for an account's assigned tasks, and they are reviewed and revoked as part of account management. The phrase is a term of art in access control rather than the loose sum of "access" and "privilege": it names the enumerable unit of authorization that account management specifies.DR-088 backfill from the noun definition column