What process determines what rights and privileges an entity has?

What process determines what rights and privileges an entity has?

• A. Authentication
• B. Identification
• C. Accounting
• D. Authorization

Answer: (D)

Authorization determines what rights and privileges an entity has. It happens after authentication, when the system applies policies to decide what a user or process is allowed to do with resources. In practice, once identity is verified, the system checks roles, attributes, or rules (such as ACLs or RBAC) to grant or deny specific actions like read, write, or execute. This separation matters: authentication verifies who you are, identification is the claimed identity, and accounting logs what you did. For example, after logging in (authentication), a user’s role is consulted to determine if they can access a file or perform a change (authorization).

Authorization determines what rights and privileges an entity has. It happens after authentication, when the system applies policies to decide what a user or process is allowed to do with resources. In practice, once identity is verified, the system checks roles, attributes, or rules (such as ACLs or RBAC) to grant or deny specific actions like read, write, or execute. This separation matters: authentication verifies who you are, identification is the claimed identity, and accounting logs what you did. For example, after logging in (authentication), a user’s role is consulted to determine if they can access a file or perform a change (authorization).