Authentication
Authentication establishes confidence that a person, device, workload, or service is the identity it claims to be.
Authorization
Authorization evaluates what an authenticated identity may access or do, under which conditions, and for how long.
Accounting
Accounting records access and activity. Useful records support monitoring, troubleshooting, audit, investigation, and non-repudiation.
Design principle
These functions should be connected but not confused. A successful sign-in does not justify unlimited access, and access without useful records weakens accountability.
BMC v0.2.2 cornerstone expansion
Start analysis of Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting with the mission or business outcome, then identify assets, identities, data, trust boundaries, dependencies, expected behavior, and credible failure or abuse cases.
Translate those observations into preventive, detective, responsive, and recovery controls. A mature explanation states not only what the concept is, but also how a practitioner demonstrates that it is working under normal, abnormal, and recovery conditions.
Evidence of effective implementation
- Documented ownership, scope, decision criteria, and permitted exceptions.
- Configuration or architectural evidence tied to a clear control objective.
- Operational telemetry showing expected and unexpected behavior.
- Testing that covers normal use, abuse cases, failure, rollback, and recovery.
- Exceptions that are approved, time bounded, monitored, and revisited.
- Lessons learned that result in updated designs, procedures, detections, or training.
Questions for learners
- Which security properties and business outcomes does Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting support?
- What assumptions must remain true for the control or process to work safely?
- What could an attacker, insider, failure, or design error do at each trust boundary?
- Which evidence would prove that controls work continuously rather than only on paper?
- How would the organization respond, restore service, and re-establish trust after failure?
Certification relevance
This subject appears in or supports the following certification bodies of knowledge: