The operating system profile contains the operating system user name, Hadoop impersonation properties, and permissions.

To increase security, create operating system profiles to divide users into specific groups. Each group is defined by the operating system profile and the configured operating system user. The groups manage mapping runs and control access to directories by specifying permissions for the operating system user in each operating system profile. The operating system user has read and write permissions to certain controlled directories. The operating system profile configuration must adequately control the directories where users have read and write permissions in order to mitigate security attacks that can result due to directory traversal. For example, if the operating system profile does not properly assign directory permissions, certain users can access files in unassigned directories.

When you configure the Metadata Access Service to use operating system profiles, the Metadata Access Service imports and preview metadata with the permissions of the operating system user that you define in the operating system profile. The operating system user must have access to the directories you configure in the profile and the directories the Metadata Access Service accesses at design time.

By default, the Metadata Access Service process imports and preview metadata using the permissions of the operating system user that starts Informatica Services. The Metadata Access Service has access only to the directories where the operating system user has read and write permissions. The Metadata Access Service provides the object metadata to the Developer tool.