Nested Groups
WebSphere Portal supports nested groups to enable simple inheritance of access control. Two groups are nested if one of the groups contains the other group as a member. WebSphere Portal 's access control system treats this as though all members of the contained group are also members of the containing group. In other words, WebSphere Portal treats permissions for nested groups as cumulative.
For example, one group, GlobalMarketing contains another group, USMarketing. WebSphere Portal treats this as though all members of USMarketing are also members of GlobalMarketing. So, members of USMarketing inherit the access rights granted to GlobalMarketing members. So, if GlobalMarketing has view access to the File Server portlet, and USMarketing has view access to the World Clock portlet, USMarketing has view access to both the File Server and World Clock portlets. So, Joe in GlobalMarketing can only access File Server portlet, but Susan in USMarketing can access the File Server portlet and the World Clock portlet.