Dynamic deployment of context-aware access control policies for constrained security devices

Securing the access to a server, guaranteeing a certain level of protection over an encrypted communication channel, executing particular counter measures when attacks are detected are examples of security requirements. Such requirements are identi ed based on organizational purposes and expectations in terms of resource access and availability and also on system vulnerabilities and threats. All these requirements belong to the so-called security policy. Deploying the policy means enforcing, i.e., con guring, those security components and mechanisms so that the system behavior be nally the one speci ed by the policy. The deployment issue becomes more di cult as the growing organizational requirements and expectations generally leave behind the integration of new security functionalities in the information system: the information system will not always embed the necessary security functionalities for the proper deployment of contextual security requirements. To overcome this issue, our solution is based on a central entity approach which takes in charge unmanaged contextual requirements and dynamically redeploys the policy when context changes are detected by this central entity. We also present an improvement over the OrBAC (Organization-Based Access Control) model. Up to now, a controller based on a contextual OrBAC policy is passive, in the sense that it assumes policy evaluation triggered by access requests. Therefore, it does not allow reasoning about policy state evolution when actions occur. The modi cations introduced by our work overcome this limitation and provide a proactive version of the model by integrating concepts from action speci cation languages

A conditional role-involved purpose-based access control model

This paper presents a role-involved conditional purpose-based access control (RCPBAC) model, where a purpose is defined as the intension of data accesses or usages. RCPBAC allows users using some data for certain purpose with conditions. The structure of RCPBAC model is defined and investigated. An algorithm is developed to achieve the compliance computation between access purposes (related to data access) and intended purposes (related to data objects) and is illustrated with role-based access control (RBAC) to support RCPBAC. According to this model, more information from data providers can be extracted while at the same time assuring privacy that maximizes the usability of consumers' data. It extends traditional access control models to a further coverage of privacy preserving in data mining environment as RBAC is one of the most popular approach towards access control to achieve database security and available in database management systems. The structure helps enterprises to circulate clear privacy promise, to collect and manage user preferences and consent

Comparison of advanced authorisation infrastructures for grid computing

The widespread use of grid technology and distributed compute power, with all its inherent benefits, will only be established if the use of that technology can be guaranteed efficient and secure. The predominant method for currently enforcing security is through the use of public key infrastructures (PKI) to support authentication and the use of access control lists (ACL) to support authorisation. These systems alone do not provide enough fine-grained control over the restriction of user rights, necessary in a dynamic grid environment. This paper compares the implementation and experiences of using the current standard for grid authorisation with Globus - the grid security infrastructure (GSI) - with the role-based access control (RBAC) authorisation infrastructure PERMIS. The suitability of these security infrastructures for integration with regard to existing grid technology is presented based upon experiences within the JISC-funded DyVOSE project

Secure Management of Personal Health Records by Applying Attribute-Based Encryption

The confidentiality of personal health records is a major problem when patients use commercial Web-based systems to store their health data. Traditional access control mechanisms, such as Role-Based Access Control, have several limitations with respect to enforcing access control policies and ensuring data confidentiality. In particular, the data has to be stored on a central server locked by the access control mechanism, and the data owner loses control on the data from the moment when the data is sent to the requester. Therefore, these mechanisms do not fulfil the requirements of data outsourcing scenarios where the third party storing the data should not have access to the plain data, and it is not trusted to enforce access control policies. In this paper, we describe a new approach which enables secure storage and controlled sharing of patient’s health records in the aforementioned scenarios. A new variant of a ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption scheme is proposed to enforce patient/organizational access control policies such that everyone can download the encrypted data but only authorized users from the social domain (e.g. family, friends, or fellow patients) or authorized users from the professional\ud domain (e.g. doctors or nurses) are allowed to decrypt it

Benefits of Location-Based Access Control:A Literature Study

Location-based access control (LBAC) has been suggested as a means to improve IT security. By 'grounding' users and systems to a particular location, \ud attackers supposedly have more difficulty in compromising a system. However, the motivation behind LBAC and its potential benefits have not been investigated thoroughly. To this end, we perform a structured literature review, and examine the goals that LBAC can potentially fulfill, \ud the specific LBAC systems that realize these goals and the context on which LBAC depends. Our paper has four main contributions:\ud first we propose a theoretical framework for LBAC evaluation, based on goals, systems and context. Second, we formulate and apply criteria for evaluating the usefulness of an LBAC system. Third, we identify four usage scenarios for LBAC: open areas and systems, hospitals, enterprises, and finally data centers and military facilities. Fourth, we propose directions for future research:\ud (i) assessing the tradeoffs between location-based, physical and logical access control, (ii) improving the transparency of LBAC decision making, and \ud (iii) formulating design criteria for facilities and working environments for optimal LBAC usage