information access
163541·updated Aug 30, 2026This phrase is **compositional** — it is the ordinary English pairing of "access" (the ability to obtain or read) with "information" (the object being accessed), used to describe the permitted operation of reading or observing data without the ability to modify, write, or transmit it back. Access control in this field concerns "the process of granting or denying specific requests to obtain and use information and related information processing services." In the context the user quotes — "allowing information access only" enforced by hardware one-way mechanisms — the phrase simply scopes the permitted operation to read/observe, as distinguished from write or bidirectional flow; it draws its meaning from that contrast, not from any independent definition. The broader field anchors such distinctions within the concept of confidentiality, defined as "preserving authorized restrictions on information access and disclosure." No authoritative source (NIST CSRC glossary, ISO/IEC 27000 series, CNSSI 4009, AICPA, or CIS) defines "information access" as a discrete term of art with its own glossary entry separate from "access" or "access control."
Source
(i.e., allowing information access only), employing hardware mechanisms to enforce one-waythe sentence this term was read in
generalized from a web lookup of the quoted expression at proposal time Verdict: compositional.
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
This phrase is compositional rather than a term of art. In the security vocabulary, "access" means the "ability and means to communicate with or otherwise interact with a system, to use system resources to handle information, to gain knowledge of the information the system contains, or to control system components and functions" — and "access type" is a privilege to perform an action on an object, with read, write, execute, append, modify, delete, and create as enumerated examples. When NIST SP 800-171r3 says "allowing information access only" as one enforcement option alongside "employing hardware mechanisms to enforce one-way information flows," it uses the phrase in its ordinary compositional sense — permitting only the read/view subset of those access types, not a named concept. No NIST, CNSSI, or ISO glossary carries "information access" as a defined compound entry distinct from its parts.
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
- information accesses
- possessive
- information access's
- pluralpossessive
- information accesses'
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
- This phrase is **compositional** — it is the ordinary English pairing of "access" (the ability to obtain or read) with "information" (the object being accessed), used to describe the permitted operation of reading or observing data without the ability to modify, write, or transmit it back. Access control in this field concerns "the process of granting or denying specific requests to obtain and use information and related information processing services." In the context the user quotes — "allowing information access only" enforced by hardware one-way mechanisms — the phrase simply scopes the permitted operation to read/observe, as distinguished from write or bidirectional flow; it draws its meaning from that contrast, not from any independent definition. The broader field anchors such distinctions within the concept of confidentiality, defined as "preserving authorized restrictions on information access and disclosure." No authoritative source (NIST CSRC glossary, ISO/IEC 27000 series, CNSSI 4009, AICPA, or CIS) defines "information access" as a discrete term of art with its own glossary entry separate from "access" or "access control."DR-088 backfill from the noun definition column