administrative privilege
163506·updated Aug 30, 2026A class of access rights — elevated above those granted to standard users — that collectively authorize an account or identity to perform security-sensitive operations that affect the configuration, integrity, or management of a system or network. What distinguishes it from ordinary user permissions is the authority to modify or override other accounts' rights and to perform security-relevant functions — such as key management, account management, network and system administration, and database administration — that ordinary users are not authorized to perform. In practice, the field uses the term to identify a condition that triggers heightened governance: users or accounts requiring administrative privileges on system accounts receive additional scrutiny from organizational personnel — such as the system owner, mission/business owner, or chief information security officer — responsible for approving such accounts and privileged access. Control frameworks invoke it primarily to enforce least-privilege goals: limiting how many accounts carry such privileges reduces the probability of a threat actor abusing them to cause harm.
Source
types include individual, group, temporary, system, guest, anonymous, emergency, developer, and service. Users who require administrative privileges onthe sentence this term was read in
generalized from a web lookup of the quoted expression at proposal time Verdict: term of art.
- What is Administrative Privileges | Glossary | CyberGhost VPN
- Administrative Privileges - Glossary
- 9.2.1. NIST 800-53 Rev4 — SIMP 6.6.0-2 documentation
- ACCESS CONTROL POLICY AND PROCEDURES
- CHAPTER THREE PAGE 1 ACCESS CONTROL Quick link to Access Control summary table
- NIST SP 800-171 Least Privilege Requirements - Lake Ridge
- CIS Critical Security Controls Navigator - v7.1
- rob privileged users
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
A class of access rights granted to an account—whether assigned to an individual, a role, a process, or a service—that authorizes operations beyond those available to ordinary users, specifically actions that alter the configuration, security posture, or resource ownership of a system or environment (such as installing software, modifying security settings, creating or managing other accounts, and controlling system-level functions). Users requiring administrative privileges on information system accounts receive additional scrutiny by appropriate organizational personnel responsible for approving such accounts and privileged access. In access-control frameworks the expression functions as a collective label for the elevated-permission tier that sits above standard user access: an operating system may define an "administrative" privilege level alongside non-administrative privilege levels, where the non-administrative levels have fewer privileges than the administrative privilege level. Governance practice, following the principle of least privilege, requires that administrative privileges be granted only to those users who really need them and have the necessary security training,
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
- administrative privileges
- possessive
- administrative privilege's
- pluralpossessive
- administrative privileges'
Framework definitions
- §1 · attested_usage_reviewer_confirmed
- No definition is given in NIST SP 800-171r3. The term is attested in use at 2 citations in that document; a definition is pending curation.Increment 2: attested in 800-171r3 without a glossary definition.
- §1 · web_lookup_draft
- A class of access rights — elevated above those granted to standard users — that collectively authorize an account or identity to perform security-sensitive operations that affect the configuration, integrity, or management of a system or network. What distinguishes it from ordinary user permissions is the authority to modify or override other accounts' rights and to perform security-relevant functions — such as key management, account management, network and system administration, and database administration — that ordinary users are not authorized to perform. In practice, the field uses the term to identify a condition that triggers heightened governance: users or accounts requiring administrative privileges on system accounts receive additional scrutiny from organizational personnel — such as the system owner, mission/business owner, or chief information security officer — responsible for approving such accounts and privileged access. Control frameworks invoke it primarily to enforce least-privilege goals: limiting how many accounts carry such privileges reduces the probability of a threat actor abusing them to cause harm.DR-088 backfill from the noun definition column