---
title: Criteria
description: Match PingDirectory connections, requests, responses, entries, and references with the criteria subsystem for policies, logging, and security restrictions.
component: pingdirectory
version: 10.2
page_id: pingdirectory:pingdirectory_security_guide:pd_sec_criteria
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingdirectory/11.1/pingdirectory_security_guide/pd_sec_criteria.html
llms_txt: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingdirectory/llms.txt
docs_for_agents: https://developer.pingidentity.com/build-with-ai/docs-for-agents.md
revdate: 2023-09-13T00:00:00Z
superseded_by: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingdirectory/11.1/pingdirectory_security_guide/pd_sec_criteria.html
---

# Criteria

The PingDirectory server provides a powerful criteria subsystem that allows it to match connections, requests, responses, entries, and references based on a wide variety of characteristics.

Criteria can be used in many ways in the server. Some of these include:

* When determining which client connection policy should be assigned to a connection

* When determining which log messages should be recorded in an access log

* When determining which types of requests should be allowed over an insecure connection if the `reject-insecure-requests` global configuration property is set to true

* When determining which types of requests should be allowed over an unauthenticated connection if the `reject-unauthenticated-requests` global configuration property is set to true

* When determining which types of bind requests should be forwarded to another server when pass-through authentication is enabled

* When determining which operations should automatically use assured replication.

* When determining which entries should be automatically updated to use entryUUID as the naming attribute

* When determining which types of delete operations should be processed as soft deletes.

* When determining which types of add and modify operations should result in "account created" and "account updated" account status notifications

* When determining the types of operations for which a custom plugin should be invoked