Term of the day: RBAC

[Keefe]

Short for Role-Based Access Control, a system of controlling which users have access to resources based on the role of the user. Access rights are grouped by role name, and access to resources is restricted to users who have been authorized to assume the associated role. For example, if a RBAC system were used in a hospital, each person that is allowed access to the hospital's network has a predefined role (doctor, nurse, lab technician, administrator, etc.). If someone is defined as having the role of doctor, than that user can access only resources on the network that the role of doctor has been allowed access to. Each user is assigned one or more roles, and each role is assigned one or more privileges to users in that role.