In computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, protection mechanisms are built into a computer architecture to support the enforcement of security policies. A simple definition of a security policy is "to set who may use what information in a computer system".

The access matrix model, first introduced in 1971, is a generalized description of operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 protection mechanisms.

The separation of protection and security

Separation of protection and security

In computer sciences the separation of protection and security is a design choice. Wulf et al. identified protection as a mechanism and security as a policy, therefore making the protection-security distinction a particular case of the separation of mechanism and policy principle.- Overview :The...

 is a special case of the separation of mechanism and policy

Separation of mechanism and policy

The separation of mechanism and policy is a design principle in computer science. It states that mechanisms should not dictate the policies according to which decisions are made about which operations to authorize, and which resources to...

.