Types of Security Principals
Subjects—or as we shall henceforth refer to them, security principals—in a Windows-based system, and by extension a Windows-based network, can be much more than just plain users. However, the user is still the most basic concept.
Users
A user is just that: some distinct entity that logs on to a computer. Fundamentally, all the security principals are at least somewhat related to users.
In Windows, there can be two types of users: local and domain. A local user is defined in the local Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database on a computer. Every Windows-based computer has a local SAM, which contains all the users on that computer.
Note
With one major exception, all Windows NT-based operating systems support the same basic ...
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