An Access Control Model to Facilitate Healthcare Information Access in Context of Team Collaboration

The delivery of healthcare relies on the sharing of patients information among a group of healthcare professionals (so-called multidisciplinary teams (MDTs)). At present, electronic health records (EHRs) are widely utilized system to create, manage and share patient healthcare information among MDTs. While it is necessary to provide healthcare professionals with privileges to access patient health information, providing too many privileges may backfire when healthcare professionals accidentally or intentionally abuse their privileges. Hence, finding a middle ground, where the necessary privileges are provided and malicious usage are avoided, is necessary. This thesis highlights the access control matters in collaborative healthcare domain. Focus is mainly on the collaborative activities that are best accomplished by organized MDTs within or among healthcare organizations with an objective of accomplishing a specific task (patient treatment). Initially, we investigate the importance and challenges of effective MDTs treatment, the sharing of patient healthcare records in healthcare delivery, patient data confidentiality and the need for flexible access of the MDTs corresponding to the requirements to fulfill their duties. Also, we discuss access control requirements in the collaborative environment with respect to EHRs and usage scenario of MDTs collaboration. Additionally, we provide summary of existing access control models along with their pros and cons pertaining to collaborative health systems. Second, we present a detailed description of the proposed access control model. In this model, the MDTs is classified based on Belbin’s team role theory to ensure that privileges are provided to the actual needs of healthcare professionals and to guarantee confidentiality as well as protect the privacy of sensitive patient information. Finally, evaluation indicates that our access control model has a number of advantages including flexibility in terms of permission management, since roles and team roles can be updated without updating privilege for every user. Moreover, the level of fine-grained control of access to patient EHRs that can be authorized to healthcare providers is managed and controlled based on the job required to meet the minimum necessary standard and need-to-know principle. Additionally, the model does not add significant administrative and performance overhead.publishedVersio

Federated Access Management for Collaborative Environments

abstract: Access control has been historically recognized as an effective technique for ensuring that computer systems preserve important security properties. Recently, attribute-based access control (ABAC) has emerged as a new paradigm to provide access mediation by leveraging the concept of attributes: observable properties that become relevant under a certain security context and are exhibited by the entities normally involved in the mediation process, namely, end-users and protected resources. Also recently, independently-run organizations from the private and public sectors have recognized the benefits of engaging in multi-disciplinary research collaborations that involve sharing sensitive proprietary resources such as scientific data, networking capabilities and computation time and have recognized ABAC as the paradigm that suits their needs for restricting the way such resources are to be shared with each other. In such a setting, a robust yet flexible access mediation scheme is crucial to guarantee participants are granted access to such resources in a safe and secure manner. However, no consensus exists either in the literature with respect to a formal model that clearly defines the way the components depicted in ABAC should interact with each other, so that the rigorous study of security properties to be effectively pursued. This dissertation proposes an approach tailored to provide a well-defined and formal definition of ABAC, including a description on how attributes exhibited by different independent organizations are to be leveraged for mediating access to shared resources, by allowing for collaborating parties to engage in federations for the specification, discovery, evaluation and communication of attributes, policies, and access mediation decisions. In addition, a software assurance framework is introduced to support the correct construction of enforcement mechanisms implementing our approach by leveraging validation and verification techniques based on software assertions, namely, design by contract (DBC) and behavioral interface specification languages (BISL). Finally, this dissertation also proposes a distributed trust framework that allows for exchanging recommendations on the perceived reputations of members of our proposed federations, in such a way that the level of trust of previously-unknown participants can be properly assessed for the purposes of access mediation.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Plataforma ABAC para aplicações da IoT baseada na norma OASIS XACML

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaA IoT (Internet of Things) é uma área que apresenta grande potencial mas embora muitos dos seus problemas já terem soluções satisfatórias, a segurança permanece um pouco esquecida, mantendo-se um como questão ainda por resolver. Um dos aspectos da segurança que ainda não foi endereçado é o controlo de acessos. O controlo de acesso é uma forma de reforçar a segurança que envolve avaliar os pedidos de acesso a recursos e negar o acesso caso este não seja autorizado, garantindo assim a segurança no acesso a recursos críticos ou vulneráveis. O controlo de Acesso é um termo lato, existindo diversos modelos ou paradigmas possíveis, dos quais os mais significativos são: IBAC (Identity Based Access Control), RBAC (Role Based Access Control) and ABAC (Attribute Based Access Control). Neste trabalho será usado o ABAC, já que oferece uma maior flexibilidade comparativamente a IBAC e RBAC. Além disso, devido à sua natureza adaptativa o ABAC tem maior longevidade e menor necessidade de manutenção. A OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) desenvolveu a norma XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) para escrita/definição de políticas de acesso e pedidos de acesso, e de avaliação de pedidos sobre conjuntos de políticas com o propósito de reforçar o controlo de acesso sobre recursos. O XACML foi definido com a intenção de que os pedidos e as políticas fossem de fácil leitura para os humanos, garantindo, porém, uma estrutura bem definida que permita uma avaliação precisa. A norma XACML usa ABAC. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de criar uma plataforma de segurança que utilize os padrões ABAC e XACML que possa ser usado por outros sistemas, reforçando o controlo de acesso sobre recursos que careçam de proteção, e garantindo acesso apenas a sujeitos autorizadas. Vai também possibilitar a definição fina ou granular de regras e pedidos permitindo uma avaliação com maior precisão e um maior grau de segurança. Os casos de uso principais são grandes aplicações IoT, como aplicações Smart City, que inclui monitorização inteligente de tráfego, consumo de energia e outros recursos públicos, monitorização pessoal de saúde, etc. Estas aplicações lidam com grandes quantidades de informação (Big Data) que é confidencial e/ou pessoal. Existe um número significativo de soluções NoSQL (Not Only SQL) para resolver o problema do volume de dados, mas a segurança é ainda uma questão por resolver. Este trabalho vai usar duas bases de dados NoSQL: uma base de dados key-value (Redis) para armazenamento de políticas e uma base de dados wide-column (Cassandra) para armazenamento de informação de sensores e informação de atributos adicionais durante os testes.IoT (Internet of Things) is an area which offers great opportunities and although a lot of issues already have satisfactory solutions, security has remained somewhat unaddressed and remains to be a big issue. Among the security aspects, we emphasize access control. Access Control is a way of enforcing security that involves evaluating requests for accessing resources and denies access if it is unauthorised, therefore providing security for vulnerable resources. Access Control is a broad term that consists of several methodologies of which the most significant are: IBAC (Identity Based Access Control), RBAC (Role Based Access Control) and ABAC (Attribute Based Access Control). In this work ABAC will be used as it offers the most flexibility compared to IBAC and RBAC. Also, because of ABAC's adaptive nature, it offers longevity and lower maintenance requirements. OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) developed the XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) standard for writing/defining requests and policies and the evaluation of the requests over sets of policies for the purpose of enforcing access control over resources. It is defined so the requests and policies are readable by humans but also have a well defined structure allowing for precise evaluation. The standard uses ABAC. This work aims to create a security framework that utilizes ABAC and the XACML standard so that it can be used by other systems and enforce access control over resources that need to be protected by allowing access only to authorised subjects. It will also allow for fine grained defining of rules and requests for more precise evaluation and therefore a greater level of security. The primary use-case scenarios are large IoT applications such as Smart City applications including: smart traffic monitoring, energy and utility consumption, personal healthcare monitoring, etc. These applications deal with large quantities (Big Data) of confidential and/or personal data. A number of NoSQL (Not Only SQL) solutions exist for solving the problem of volume but security is still an issue. This work will use two NoSQL databases. A key-value database (Redis) for the storing of policies and a wide-column database (Cassandra) for storing sensor data and additional attribute data during testing

Privacy and security in genomic information

Today, whole human genome sequencing is a reality affordable for many individuals. Technology advances in this arena are going fast, in fact it is possible that we are living the beginning of a “genomic revolution”. However, human genome contains highly sensitive information about individuals. Concerns regarding privacy and security are getting wider as technology advances ever more rapidly. The present work focuses on contributing and support the development of new security and privacy mechanisms in genomic information formats. An intended software prototype has been developed and it is presented in the current report. The tool permits reading and handling genomic information after evaluating the access requirements according to defined rules

Developing an ABAC-Based Grant Proposal Workflow Management System

In the advent of the digital transformation, online business processes need to be automated and modeled as workflows. A workflow typically involves a sequence of coordinated tasks and shared data that need to be secured and protected from unauthorized access. In other words, a workflow can be described simply as the movement of documents and activities through a business process among different users. Such connected flow of information among various users with different permission level offers many benefits along with new challenges. Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated as skilled and motivated attackers both insiders and outsiders are equipped with advanced and diverse penetration tools and techniques. So apart from standard functional requirements, security is a critical requirement for such systems. We need to have a new approach to more secure design, configuration, implementation and management of workflow systems. In this paper, we propose a new software design model when developing a workflow system that inherently decouples the system level functional requirements from the security specifications. This externalization of authorization from the code makes it more flexible to support dynamic business agility. Moreover, the proposed model is combined with contextual information to accommodate dynamic access control enforcement. The given architecture provides outstanding levels of control, security, privacy and compliance with regulatory standards by using more fine-grained static as well as dynamic Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) policies. We also develop a viable implementation called Grant Proposal Workflow Management System (GPWFMS) that supports not only functional and security specifications of workflow but also extended complex features like Obligations and Delegation of Authority which is lacking in the much existing literature

KONSEP ATTRIBUTE BASED ACCESS CONTROL (ABAC) PADA LEMARI PENYIMPANAN BUKTI DIGITAL (LPBD)

Abstract An important factor of the investigation into cybercrime cases is the case relating to the evidence found. Electronic evidence and digital evidence found in criminal cases should be maintained from the outset, to be held accountable for justice. Sistem digital evidence storage cabinets (LPBD) is one solution to overcome the management of digital evidence is based on digital evidence cabinet (DEC), only the system is not equipped with a good access control model. The LPBD system needs to be built not only on the issue of digital evidence management, but other important components in the digital proof storage cabinet itself, access arrangements, so that the scheme or the design of access control policies on LPBD is very important. The access controls used on previous LPBDs are only done by authentication mechanisms and User authorization mechanisms, no other more complex parameters to support requests made on LPBD systems. In the absence of a good access control model design scheme for LPBD, it is necessary to design an access control policy model using the attribute-based access control approach (ABAC) because ABAC is a more flexible access control model in the application of attributes to users , and the. XACML hierarchy can support control requirements access used in digital evidence storage cabinets (LPBD).  ABSTRAK Faktor penting dalam proses investigasi sebuah kasus cybercrime yaitu hal yang terkait dengan barang bukti yang ditemukan. Bukti elektronik maupun bukti digital yang ditemukan dalam sebuah kasus kejahatan harus tetap terjaga keasliannya, untuk dapat dipertanggung jawabkan dipengadilan. Sistem lemari penyimpanan bukti digital (LPBD) menjadi salah satu solusi untuk permasalahan manajemen bukti digital ini yang berdasar pada digital evidence cabinet (DEC), hanya saja sistem tersebut belum dilengkapi dengan model access control yang baik. Sistem LPBD seharusnya dibuat tidak hanya berdasar pada permasalahan-permasalahan tentang manajemen bukti digital saja, akan tetapi komponen-komponen penting lainnya dalam lemari penyimpanan bukti digital itu sendiri yaitu pengaturan aksesnya, sehingga skema atau desain access control policy terhadap LPBD menjadi sangat penting. Access control yang gunakan terhadap LPBD sebelumnya dibuat hanya dengan mekanisme authefikasi dan authorisasi user saja, tidak adanya parameter lain yang lebih kompleks untuk mendukung  sebuah request yang dilakukan pada sistem LPBD. Mengingat belum adanya skema rancangan model access control yang baik pada LPBD ini, maka perlu dilakukan perancangan model access control policy menggunakan pendekatan attribute based access control (ABAC) karena ABAC merupakan model access control yang lebih fleksibel dalam penerapan attribute terhadap user, dan hierarchy XACML yang dapat mendukung kebutuhan-kebutuhan access control yang digunakan pada lemari penyimpanan bukti digital (LPBD).How To Cite : Panende, M.F, Prayudi, Y. Riadi, I. (2018). KONSEP ATTRIBUTE BASED ACCESS CONTROL (ABAC) PADA LEMARI PENYIMPANAN BUKTI DIGITAL (LPBD). Jurnal Teknik Informatika, 11(1), 85-94.  doi 10.15408/jti.v11i1.7220 Permalink/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/jti.v11i1.7220

Toward an Interoperable and Centralized Consent Centric Access Control Model for Healthcare Resources: Model and Implementation

Although patients have the legal right in Canada and many other countries to specify how, when and by whom their medical records can be accessed, the harsh reality is that in almost all cases using existing systems and solutions, patients are unable to ensure that their expressed consent directives are respected. Almost all health information systems deployed today lack the most basic ability to express and enforce consent at a data field level, and all are stretched when consent management must span disparate systems. This is not an unrecognized problem in the consent management domain. Numerous consent model types have been proposed, along with a multitude of access control mechanisms. Unfortunately, most contemporary consent models used today are either paper-based, an online consent directive with a digital signature, a simple checkbox to either opt-in, opt-out, or employ simple browser cookies. The result is that most consent models can capture only the most basic of consent expressions. Despite there being many different approaches for expressing and managing consent, few models actually enable patients to express discrete consent directives at the resource or at the data attribute level. As a result, contemporary consent models are mainly used to meet the compliance obligations of healthcare organizations as opposed to empowering patients to manage their privacy and control access to their medical records. No architecture or system that we are aware of can adjudicate field-level consent directives in the multi-system, multi-jurisdiction, multi-provider, multi-patient environ¬ments that exist in healthcare today. The inability to effectively and efficiently capture and enforce patient consent directives leaves many data custodians vulnerable to inadvertent data release – mitigated only by the fact that many providers attempt to secure a carte-blanche consent directive from all patients to relieve themselves of the problem of needing to respect more restrictive consent directives. Advances in healthcare IT systems are adding to, rather than reducing, the complexity of protecting patient privacy which exposes an important research question: How can we empower patients to have control over their health records and be able to dictate who has access to their records, where and when? This thesis addresses this question by proposing a consent-centric architecture called consent-centric attribute-based access control (C-ABAC). C-ABAC offers a new standard for authorization. It allows expression of consent at any abstraction level – from the record to the data field level – and also guarantees that patient consent directives can be enforced at the system level, ensuring that patient data is made available only to parties entitled to access it. The C-ABAC model offers (1) a new standard for “authorization,” (2) a new profile and application of attribute-based access control, (3) support for fine-grained access control, (4) seamless interoperability, (5) automation of a complex process and (6) dynamic flexibility allowing for both rich consent expression and complex consent enforcement