account type
1415·updated Aug 30, 2026A category for various accounts that are on a computer system.
Source
other than those determined by account type (e.g.,the sentence this term was read in
A web lookup ran when this term was proposed
A classification label applied to a managed system account that groups it with others sharing the same purpose, ownership, or operational context — distinguishing individual user accounts from shared, group, service, guest, anonymous, emergency, temporary, developer, and similar categories. Organizations may choose to define access privileges or other attributes by account, type of account, or a combination of the two; account type therefore functions as a policy-level handle that lets controls, restrictions, and lifecycle rules be set once and inherited by every account falling within that class. Organizations identify and select types of information system accounts to support organizational missions and business functions, and account type is the axis along which that selection, documentation, and enforcement is done — for example, types of accounts that organizations may wish to prohibit due to increased risk include shared, group, emergency, anonymous, temporary, and guest accounts.
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
- account types
- possessive
- account type's
- pluralpossessive
- account types'
Framework definitions
- §1
- A category for various accounts that are on a computer system.
- §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 · legacy_primary
- A category for various accounts that are on a computer system.DR-088 backfill from the noun definition column