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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 864–866Cite as

Discretionary Access Control

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Synonyms

DAC; Identity-based Access Control; etc.

Definition

Discretionary access control (DAC) provides for owner-controlled administration of access rights to objects. DAC, as the name implies, permits the granting and revocation of access permissions to be left to the discretion of the individual users. A DAC mechanism allows users to grant or revoke access to any of the objects under their control.

Historical Background

Trusted computer system evaluation criteria (TCSEC) published by the US Department of Defense, commonly known as the Orange Book, defined two important access control modes for information systems: discretionary access control (DAC) and mandatory access control (MAC). As the name implies, DAC allows the creators or owners of files to assign access rights. Also, a user (or subject) with discretionary access to information can pass that information on to another user (or subject). DAC has its genesis in the academic and research setting from which time-sharing systems...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, Tempe,  , AZ, USA

    Gail-Joon Ahn

Authors
  1. Gail-Joon Ahn
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Ahn, GJ. (2009). Discretionary Access Control. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_135

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