As the security administrator or a delegate defines authorized users, groups, and protected resources, RACF® builds profiles, which contain the information RACF uses to control access to the protected resources. Each profile is owned by a user or group. (By default, the owner of a profile is the user who creates it.)

User and group profiles contain descriptions of the authorized users of a RACF-protected system. Data set and general resource profiles contain descriptions of the resources and the levels of authority that are necessary to access these resources.