Policy Administration Point (PAP)

What is a Policy Administration Point?

In authorization architecture, a Policy Administration Point (PAP) is the system responsible for managing the lifecycle of access control policies. It provides tools for:

• Policy creation – Define who can do what on which resources
• Policy modeling – Structure roles, attributes, and relationships
• Version control – Track changes and maintain audit trails
• Testing & validation – Verify policies before deployment
• Deployment – Push policies to Policy Decision Points (PDPs)

The PAP sits at the heart of a Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) architecture, working alongside Policy Decision Points (PDPs) and Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs).

PAP vs PDP vs PEP

While PDPs like Open Policy Agent or Amazon Verified Permissions execute policies, the PAP is where those policies originate. A well-designed PAP ensures consistency, collaboration, and governance across all authorization decisions.

Why You Need a Dedicated PAP

Many organizations scatter authorization logic across codebases, configuration files, and ad-hoc scripts. This leads to:

• Inconsistent access rules across applications
• Difficulty auditing who can access what
• Security blind spots and privilege creep
• Slow policy changes due to code deployments

A dedicated Policy Administration Point solves these problems by providing a single source of truth for all authorization policies, with proper governance, versioning, and deployment workflows.

Big ACL as Your Policy Administration Point

Big ACL is a modern Policy Administration Point designed for enterprises that need:

• Natural language policy modeling – Write rules that business teams understand
• Multi-format export – Generate Cedar, Rego, and other policy languages
• Automated testing – Validate policies before deployment
• Collaboration – Enable security, dev, and product teams to work together
• Integration – Connect with IAM, IGA, and identity providers

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