An indication of whether messages sent on behalf of this user to/from the SNMP engine identified by usmUserEngineID, can be authenticated, and if so, the type of authentication protocol which is used.

An instance of this object is created concurrently with the creation of any other object instance for the same user (i.e., as part of the processing of the set operation which creates the first object instance in the same conceptual row).

If an initial set operation (i.e. at row creation time) tries to set a value for an unknown or unsupported protocol, then a 'wrongValue' error must be returned.

The value will be overwritten/set when a set operation is performed on the corresponding instance of usmUserCloneFrom.

Once instantiated, the value of such an instance of this object can only be changed via a set operation to the value of the usmNoAuthProtocol.

If a set operation tries to change the value of an

existing instance of this object to any value other than usmNoAuthProtocol, then an 'inconsistentValue' error must be returned.

If a set operation tries to set the value to the usmNoAuthProtocol while the usmUserPrivProtocol value in the same row is not equal to usmNoPrivProtocol, then an 'inconsistentValue' error must be returned. That means that an SNMP command generator application must first ensure that the usmUserPrivProtocol is set to the usmNoPrivProtocol value before it can set the usmUserAuthProtocol value to usmNoAuthProtocol.