A Dynamic Access Control Model Using Authorising Workflow and Task-Role-Based Access Control

Access control is fundamental and prerequisite to govern and safeguard information assets within an organisation. Organisations generally use web enabled remote access coupled with applications access distributed on the various networks facing various challenges including increase operation burden, monitoring issues due to the dynamic and complex nature of security policies for access control. The increasingly dynamic nature of collaborations means that in one context a user should have access to sensitive information and not applicable for another context. The current access control models are static and lack of Dynamic Segregation of Duties (SoD), Task instance level of Segregation and decision making in real time. This paper addresses the limitations and supports access management in borderless network environment with dynamic SoD capability at real time access control decision making and policy enforcement. This research makes three contributions: i) Defining an Authorising Workflow Task Role Based Access Control using the existing task and workflow concepts. It integrates the dynamic SoD considering the task instance restriction to ensure overall access governance and accountability. It enhances the existing access control models such as RBAC by dynamically granting users access right and providing Access governance. ii) Extended the OASIS standard of XACML policy language to support the dynamic access control requirements and enforce the access control rules for real time decision making to mitigate risk relating to access control such as escalation of privilege in broken access control and insufficient logging and monitoring iii) The model is implemented using open source Balana policy engine to demonstrate its applicability to a real industrial use case from a financial institution. The results show that, AW-TRBAC is scalable consuming relatively large number of complex request and able to meet the requirements of dynamic access control characteristics

A Dynamic Access Control Model Using Authorising Workfow and Task Role-based Access Control

Access control is fundamental and prerequisite to govern and safeguard information assets within an organisation. Organisations generally use Web enabled remote access coupled with applications access distributed across various networks. These networks face various challenges including increase operational burden and monitoring issues due to the dynamic and complex nature of security policies for access control. The increasingly dynamic nature of collaborations means that in one context a user should have access to sensitive information, whilst not being allowed access in other contexts. The current access control models are static and lack Dynamic Segregation of Duties (SoD), Task instance level of Segregation, and decision making in real time. This thesis addresses these limitations describes tools to support access management in borderless network environments with dynamic SoD capability and real time access control decision making and policy enforcement. This thesis makes three contributions: i) Defining an Authorising Workflow Task Role Based Access Control (AW-TRBAC) using existing task and workflow concepts. This new workflow integrates dynamic SoD, whilst considering task instance restriction to ensure overall access governance and accountability. It enhances existing access control models such as Role Based Access Control (RBAC) by dynamically granting users access rights and providing access governance. ii) Extension of the OASIS standard of XACML policy language to support dynamic access control requirements and enforce access control rules for real time decision making. This mitigates risks relating to access control, such as escalation of privilege in broken access control, and insucient logging and monitoring. iii) The AW-TRBAC model is implemented by extending the open source XACML (Balana) policy engine to demonstrate its applicability to a real industrial use case from a financial institution. The results show that AW-TRBAC is scalable, can process relatively large numbers of complex requests, and meets the requirements of real time access control decision making, governance and mitigating broken access control risk

Adding TQ-BOT into a Third-party Learning Management System

Intelligent Tutoring Systems are computer programs that aim at providing personalized instruction to students. In recent years, artificial intelligence conversational robots, usually known as chatterbots, have become very popular in the Internet. In this paper we show how chatterbots can be integrated in e-Learning Systems. To perform such an integration the Service Oriented Architecture paradigm is adopted and e-learning standardization initiatives are considered. A middleware is provided to enable the integration and reuse of chatterbots by e-Learning systems enabling a tight control of their operation. Such middleware takes to account several issues such as authorising users, creating instances, transferring data to and from the chatterbot, assigning permissions to users, and subscribing to events. Our approach is applied to the specific case of TQ-Bot, which is use to track and supervise the student progress and to provide answers orienting the student to the more appropriate course contents

Single Sign On Using Keycloak Integrated Public Key Infrastructure for User Authentication In Indonesia’s Electronic Based Government System

The government in carrying out its function as a public administration servant is regulated in law of the Republic of Indonesia number 25/2009 on public services. In this regulated about electronic government (e-government), many individuals use various web applications that require users to authenticate themselves to access each application. Many entities require various web- based applications for operational activities. This makes centralized access management for web-based applications very much needed. Currently, access management is often implemented using Single Sign On (SSO) with password authentication method. Security considerations arise against the use of passwords. This is because passwords have a vulnerability to brute forcing using a password list, and human nature often uses repeated or uncomplicated passwords. There is an alternative authentication method, namely Mutual TLS which utilizes Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Users authenticate with X.509 digital certificates, so the authentication factor becomes something you have. This research aims to implement an integrated PKI SSO system and RBAC access automation. The approach of this project is research, design, implementation, and testing. The entire system is built with open-source software and implemented on a cloud infrastructure. The system has three subsystems, namely registration, login and RBAC access automation. All subsystems are tested according to the specified flow. The test results show that the registration subsystem has been successfully carried out as evidenced by the success of filling in personal data, approval flow, and downloading of certificates. The login subsystem was also successfully implemented, as evidenced by the existence of mTLS authentication with certificate validation. In testing the RBAC access automation subsystem, it is shown that the script created can perform access checks and access remediation if needed

User-controlled access management to resources on the Web

PhD ThesisThe rapidly developing Web environment provides users with a wide set of rich services as varied and complex as desktop applications. Those services are collectively referred to as "Web 2.0", with such examples as Facebook, Google Apps, Salesforce, or Wordpress, among many others. These applications are used for creating, managing, and sharing online data between users and services on the Web. With the shift from desktop computers to the Web, users create and store more of their data online and not on the hard drives of their computers. This data includes personal information, documents, photos, as well as other resources. Irrespective of the environment, either desktop or the Web, it is the user who creates the data, who disseminates it and who shares this data. On the Web, however, sharing resources poses new security and usability challenges which were not present in traditional computing. Access control, also known as authorisation, that aims to protect such sharing, is currently poorly addressed in this environment. Existing access control is often not well suited to the increasing amount of highly distributed Web data and does not give users the required flexibility in managing their data. This thesis discusses new solutions to access control for the Web. Firstly, it shows a proposal named User-Managed Access Control (UMAC) and presents its architecture and protocol. This thesis then focuses on the User-Managed Access (UMA) solution that is researched by the User- Managed Access Work Group at Kantara Initiative. The UMA approach allows the user to play a pivotal role in assigning access rights to their resources which may be spread across multiple cloud-based Web applications. Unlike existing authorisation systems, it relies on a user’s centrally located security requirements for these resources. The security requirements are expressed in the form of access control policies and are stored and evaluated in a specialised component called Authorisation Manager. Users are provided with a consistent User Experience for managing access control for their distributed online data and are provided with a holistic view of the security applied to this data. Furthermore, this thesis presents the software that implements the UMA proposal. In particular, this thesis shows frameworks that allow Web applications to delegate their access control function to an Authorisation Manager. It also presents design and implementation of an Authorisation Manager and discusses its evaluation conducted with a user study. It then discusses design and implementation of a second, improved Authorisation Manager. Furthermore, this thesis presents the applicability of the UMA approach and the implemented software to real-world scenarios

Dynamic and emerging information systems strategy formulation and implementation

Early attempts to formulate information systems (IS) strategies concentrated on the analytical task of deriving IS strategies from business plans. The limitations of the static plans that often resulted from these formal studies were, however, soon discovered. The critics suggested informal and incremental planning to ensure flexibility, creativity and strategic thinking to comprise emergent strategies as well as planned strategies. In previous IS planning research, there appears to be a contradiction between the published planning methods and the generally held views about effective implementation of IS planning process. The explicit methods described in IS literature predominantly assume a comprehensive IS planning process. Despite the fact that many researchers consider incremental approaches to be more effective, methods that can be used to facilitate incremental IS planning are few, not detailed enough and not comprehensive