The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
memory protection
A system to prevent one process
corrupting the memory (or other resources) of any other,
including the operating system. Memory protection usually
relies on a combination of hardware (a memory management
unit) and software to allocate memory to processes and handle
exceptions.
The effectiveness of memory protection varies from one
operating system to another. In most versions of Unix it is
almost impossible to corrupt another process' memory, except
in some archaic implementations and Lunix (not Linux!).
Under Microsoft Windows (version? hardware?) any 16 bit
application(?) can circumvent the memory protection, often
leading to one or more GPFs. Currently (April 1996) neither
Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, nor Mac OS offer
memory protection. Windows NT has it, and Mac OS System 8
will offer a form of memory protection.
[MS DOS EMM386 relevant?]
(1996-09-10)