What is Principle of least privilege?

The idea of giving users, programs and services only the minimum privileges needed to do their job. It keeps the scope of damage small even if an account is taken over, malware runs or someone makes a mistake.

Japanese name: 最小権限の原則

Principle of least privilege appears in 2 practice questions across 2 topics, including Information Security Basics, Linux and Command-Line Basics.

Field: Information Security Basics

Try it: questions about Principle of least privilege

Which practice follows the principle of least privilege?

  1. AGiving everyone administrator rights to save effort
  2. BLetting everyone read and write every file to simplify permission settings
  3. CGiving users and programs only the minimum rights needed for their work, and doing everyday work with a non-administrator account
Show answer and explanation

Answer: C. Giving users and programs only the minimum rights needed for their work, and doing everyday work with a non-administrator account

The principle of least privilege means giving users, programs and service accounts only the minimum rights needed to do their job. With limited rights, the damage can be kept small even when an account is taken over, malware runs or someone makes a mistake. For example, everyday email and web browsing is done with a standard account, and administrator rights are used only for tasks that need them. For information there is the related idea of need-to-know, in which only people who need the information for their work can access it. Promptly revoking rights that are no longer needed after a transfer or departure is also important.

Principle of least privilege in the explanations

Questions that mention Principle of least privilege (2)

  1. Which practice follows the principle of least privilege?
  2. Which of the following correctly describes the sudo command on Linux?

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Related terms

Superuser File permissions Cross-site scripting (XSS) Digital signature Hash function Message authentication code Multi-factor authentication Phishing Public-key cryptography Ransomware

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