Usergrps

Usergrps is a term used in some software systems to denote a collection of user accounts treated as a single principal for access control and resource management. It is a pluralized form often found in documentation or configuration files and may appear in directory services, application IAM layers, or custom security schemas.

A typical usergrp consists of an identifier, a human-readable name, a description, a membership set of user identifiers, and optional metadata such as creation date, owner, and policy references. Membership may be static, defined explicitly, or dynamic, inferred from user attributes. Some implementations also support nested groups, allowing a usergrp to include other usergrps to express hierarchical or composite permissions.

Use of usergrps enables administrators to grant permissions and resources to a set of users collectively rather than individually. They are commonly used to assign access rights, licenses, quotas, or notification scopes, and to apply group-based policies across applications and services. In directory services and cloud IAM systems, usergrps map to security principals that can be targeted by authorization rules.

Management and governance considerations include lifecycle administration, naming conventions, and change auditing. Membership changes should be logged, and best practices emphasize least privilege, regular review, and avoiding privilege creep. Group scope matters: some systems distinguish global versus local groups, and federation between domains or cloud accounts may be used to extend usergrps across boundaries.

Related concepts include user, group, role, policy, access control lists, and identity and access management. Common real-world analogues are Unix/Linux groups, Windows security groups, and cloud IAM group constructs.