Information Assurance

3.2. Identification and Authentication

In order to control access to resources and to make users of a computer system accountable for their actions, it is necessary that the computer system has some way of associating actions with users. This means that the computer system must have some way of identifying and distinguishing users. The standard way of doing this is to provide each user with an account. This account provides a way of linking human users with the actions they perform while interacting with the computer.^[1]

^[1] In networked systems, each machine usually has an account, so that, for example, a client machine can request actions on a remote server and have those actions linked to the client.

Having successfully logged on to a computer ...