inheritance

inheritance: In security, a mechanism that allows a specific access control entry (ACE) to be copied from the container where it was applied to all children of the container. Inheritance can be used to manage access to a whole subtree of objects in a single update operation.

In Active Directory, the ability to build new object classes from existing object classes. The new object is defined as a subclass of the original object class. The original object class becomes a superclass of the new object. A subclass inherits the attributes of the superclass, including structure rules and content rules.

In Group Policy, a mechanism that allows policy settings in Group Policy objects (GPOs) that are linked to parent containers to be applied to objects in child containers.