Protection Rings
Protection Rings are concentric rings that provide strict boundaries and definitions for what the processes that work within each ring can access and what operations they can successfully execute.
The processes that operate within the inner rings have more privileges than the processes operating in the outer rings, because the inner rings only permit the most trusted components and processes to operate within them.
Protection rings support the availability, integrity, and confidentiality requirements of multitasking operating systems.
The most commonly used architecture provides four protection rings:
Ring 0 Operating system kernel
Ring 1 Remaining parts of the operating system
Ring 2 I/O drivers and utilities
Ring 3 Applications and user activity