security principal

What is Security Principal?

An object in Active Directory of Microsoft Windows 2000 that can be assigned permissions and rights.

How It Works

Three types of security principals are used in Windows 2000 networks:

• User objects:
  Represent individual user accounts

   

• Group objects:
  Can be used to group other security principals for assigning permissions and to ease administration

   

• Computer objects:
  Represent individual computers running Windows 2000 on the network

   

Security principals are uniquely identified by security identifiers (SIDs), which provide a unique, internal, alphanumeric identifier for the security principal.