Mandatory Access Control (MAC)

Definition

An access control policy that is uniformly enforced across all sub jects and objects within the boundary of an information system. A subject that has been gr anted access to information is constrained from doing any of the following: (i) passin g the information to unauthorized subjects or objects; (ii) granting its privileges to other sub jects; (iii) changing one or more security attributes on subjects, objects, the information system, or system components; (iv) choosing the security attributes to be associated w ith newly- created or modified objects; or (v) changing the rules governing acce ss control. Organization-defined subjects may explicitly be granted organization-defined privileges (i.e., they are trusted subjects) such that they are not limited by so me or all of the above constraints.