Permissions Inheritance

Jenny Branham
-Expert in Residence

Permissions inheritance in SharePoint simply refers to how an object in SharePoint is receiving security. An object such as a site, list or item, can be said to have inherited permissions when it uses the same permissions as its parent object. For example, a document inheriting security is using the same permissions that have been applied to its parent document library. When an object is said to have “unique” permissions, its security is unique or separate from the parent object. For example, a document with unique security has separate permissions from the parent library. Changes to the parent object will NOT affect the child and likewise, changes at the child level will NOT affect the parent object. With this, considering security in SharePoint becomes very complex. To get a true and complete picture of how someone has access to an environment, every site, subsite, list/library, folder, and item will need to be evaluated.

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