classes of user

A categorization scheme used in access control policy to group principals — human users, service accounts, or processes — by shared functional role, organizational position, trust level, or privilege profile, so that access rights and restrictions can be assigned uniformly to the group rather than individually. NIST SP 800-53 uses it as a policy variable (e.g., "the privileges assigned to organization-defined roles or classes of users") to let each organization name the groupings that map to its own mission and business functions. The CNSSI 4009 glossary likewise places it at system-description level, listing "classes of users" alongside operational policies and system interactions as components of a security concept of operations. In authorization frameworks, membership in a class is determined by attributes associated with the user and then mapped to one or more application roles, with selective access granted based on that membership — making the expression a standard way to abstract the diversity of real-world principals into a manageable, auditable privilege structure.

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