The profile includes the schedules and rules governing the partition’s assigned assets and the assets' accounts. For example, the profile defines how often a password check is required on an asset or account.

A partition can have multiple profiles, each assigned to different assets, if desired. An account is governed by only one profile. If an account is not explicitly assigned to a profile, the account is governed by the one assigned to the parent asset. If that asset does not have an assigned profile, the partition's default profile is assigned. When updating or restarting a service on a password change, the profile assigned to the asset is used for dependent account service modifications.

When you create a new partition, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords creates a corresponding default profile with default schedules and rules. You can create multiple profiles to govern the accounts assigned to a partition. Both assets and accounts are assigned to the scope of a profile.

For example, suppose you have an asset with 12 accounts and you configure the profile to check and change passwords every 60 days. If you want the password managed for one of those accounts every seven days, you can create another profile and add the individual account to the new profile. Now, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords will check and change all the passwords on this asset every 60 days except for this account, which will change every seven days.

Implicit and explicit association

It is important to understand the difference between implicit and explicit assignments to a profile.

Implicit associations

Safeguard for Privileged Passwords makes implicit assignments. For example, when you add an asset to Safeguard for Privileged Passwords, it automatically adds the asset to the default partition and assigns it to the scope of the default profile. This is called implicit association. Assets implicitly inherit the partition's default profile. Similarly, accounts inherit their parent asset’s profile. That means when you add an account to an asset, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords implicitly adds that account to its asset’s profile.

Later, if you reassign the asset to another profile, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords automatically reassigns all of the asset’s associated accounts to the new profile.

Explicit associations

Safeguard for Privileged Passwords allows you to explicitly add an asset or an account to a specific profile. When you explicitly assign an asset to a profile, it overrides the implicit inheritance from the partition so the asset's profile is no longer determined by its partition. Similarly, when you explicitly assign an account to a profile, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords overrides the implicit inheritance from the asset and the account’s profile is no longer determined by its asset.

Now, if you reassign the asset to another profile, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords will not reassign the asset’s associated accounts that were explicitly assigned to the old profile.

Resetting the default profile

If you set another profile as the default, Safeguard for Privileged Passwords implicitly reassigns all assets and their associated accounts to that new default, but it will not reassign any assets or accounts that you have explicitly assigned to a profile. Once the implicit inheritance is broken, changing a partition's default profile has no effect on the scope of a profile. For more information, see Setting a default profile.