| Access control policies (e.g., identity-based policies, role-based policies, attribute-based policies) and access enforcement mechanisms (e.g., access control lists, access control matrices, cryptography) are employed by organizations to control access between users (or processes acting on behalf of users) and objects (e.g., devices, files, records, processes, programs, domains).
DAC is a type of access control methodology serving as a means of restricting access to objects and data based on the identity of subjects and/or groups to which they belong. It is discretionary in the sense that application users with the appropriate permissions to access an application resource or data have the discretion to pass that permission on to another user either directly or indirectly.
Data protection requirements may result in a DAC policy being specified as part of the application design. Discretionary access controls would be employed at the application level to restrict and control access to application objects and data thereby providing increased information security for the organization.
When DAC controls are employed, those controls must limit sharing to named application users, groups of users or both. The application DAC controls must also limit the propagation of access rights and have the ability to exclude access to data down to the granularity of a single user.
Databases using DAC must have the ability for the owner of an object or information to assign or revoke rights to view or modify the object or information. If the owner of an object or information does not have rights to exclude access to an object or information at a user level, users may gain access to objects and information they are not authorized to view/modify. |
