Policy Enforcement Point (PEP)

PEP in security frameworks acts as a gatekeeper ensuring that only authorized users or systems can access sensitive data or services, while enforcing principles such as least privilege, user authentication and policy-driven authorization.

Though PEP can function on its own in a framework, its functionality would be significantly limited in such set-up (e.g. pre-defined, static rules or ACLs to determine whether the access is granted or not). To ensure a high level of security, compliance and operational efficiency, PEP typically works in conjuction with PDP (Policy Decision Point).