The owner is a single NIS+ principal.
A principal making a request for access to an NIS+ object must be authenticated (present a valid DES credential) before being granted owner access rights.
By default, an object's owner is the principal that created the object. However, an object's owner can cede ownership to another principal in two ways:
One way is for the principal to specify a different owner at the time the object is created (see Specifying NIS+ Access Rights in Commands).
A second way is for the principal to change the ownership of the object after it is created (see Changing Ownership of NIS+ Objects and Entries).
Once a principal gives up ownership, that principal gives up all owner's access rights to the object and keeps only the rights the object assigns to either the group, the world, or nobody.