Access Granularity

Definitions

Definition 1

Access granularity designates the scale or precision level(s) at which access control is supported by a system.

A system that supports finer grained access controls may provide more configurational flexibility but may require higher maintenance costs, unless it provides efficient mechanisms to simplify and automate access management. Conversely, a system that supports coarser grained access controls may provide less configurational flexibility but may require lower maintenance costs.

Finer access granularity allows for more accurate configuration of access policies such as toxic rights combinations.

A system may simultaneously support multiple access granularity levels. When loosely speaking about the granularity of a system, the intention is often to get a sense of the flexibility provided by a system and thus the smallest level is generally implied.

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