What is the principle of least privilege and how is it implemented?

The principle of least privilege grants users, processes, and systems only the minimum access rights needed to perform their specific tasks. It limits the damage from accidents, insider threats, and compromised accounts. Implementation includes role-based access control assigning permissions by job function, just-in-time access granting elevated privileges only when needed, regular access reviews to remove unnecessary permissions, separate administrative accounts from daily user accounts, and application whitelisting restricting which software can run.