History and definition of the term 'principal'?

[Sean W. Smith]

I like the definition in Kaufman-Perlman-Speciner:

"A completely generic term used by the security community to include  
both people and computer systems.  Coined because it is more  
dignified than 'thingy' and because 'object' and 'entity' (which also  
means thingy) were already overused."

--Sean




Sean W. Smith, Ph.D.  sws at cs.dartmouth.edu  www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sws/
Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH USA




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