mandate, authorization, authorisation (noun)

a document giving an official instruction or command

authority, authorization, authorisation, potency, dominance, say-so (noun)

the power or right to give orders or make decisions

"he has the authority to issue warrants"; "deputies are given authorization to make arrests"; "a place of potency in the state"

authority, authorization, authorisation, sanction (noun)

official permission or approval

"authority for the program was renewed several times"

authorization, authorisation, empowerment (noun)

the act of conferring legality or sanction or formal warrant

authorisation

Authorization or authorisation (see spelling differences) is the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources, which is related to general information security and computer security, and to access control in particular. More formally, "to authorize" is to define an access policy. For example, human resources staff are normally authorized to access employee records and this policy is often formalized as access control rules in a computer system. During operation, the system uses the access control rules to decide whether access requests from (authenticated) consumers shall be approved (granted) or disapproved (rejected). Resources include individual files or an item's data, computer programs, computer devices and functionality provided by computer applications. Examples of consumers are computer users, computer software and other hardware on the computer.