Glossary
Impersonation
Impersonation lets one principal act as though it were another, typically for support or debugging purposes — a system administrator temporarily acting as a user to reproduce a reported problem, for instance. Unlike delegation, impersonation can make it appear, in ordinary logs, that the impersonated identity performed the action itself.
Impersonation used without safeguards erases exactly the accountability that authorization systems are meant to preserve. Used responsibly, it is logged separately from the impersonated identity's own actions, time-limited, and restricted to a narrow, reviewable set of circumstances.