An Administrative Model for Role-Based Access Control Using Hierarchical Namespace

Access Control is an important mechanism of information security. Role-Based Access Control is a famous access control approach with good flexibility. RBAC96 and ARBAC97 are classical RBAC models. The ARBAC97 model facilitates decentralized administration of RBAC. However, ARBAC97 has some shortcomings in the case of being used in an organization with autonomous subsidiaries. The member of an administrative role can operate directly in the role range of a junior administrative role, which violates the autonomy of subsidiaries. We propose a new model named N-RBAC to overcome this weakness. In NRBAC, roles are arranged according to a hierarchical namespace structure. Thus the role hierarchy is constructed in a local space instead of in a global space. The N-RBAC model does a better work in decentralized role administration in those organizations composed of autonomous subsidiaries

Analyzing temporal role based access control models

Today, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is the de facto model used for advanced access control, and is widely deployed in diverse enterprises of all sizes. Several extensions to the authorization as well as the administrative models for RBAC have been adopted in recent years. In this paper, we consider the temporal extension of RBAC (TRBAC), and develop safety analysis techniques for it. Safety analysis is essential for understanding the implications of security policies both at the stage of specification and modification. Towards this end, in this paper, we first define an administrative model for TRBAC. Our strategy for performing safety analysis is to appropriately decompose the TRBAC analysis problem into multiple subproblems similar to RBAC. Along with making the analysis simpler, this enables us to leverage and adapt existing analysis techniques developed for traditional RBAC. We have adapted and experimented with employing two state of the art analysis approaches developed for RBAC as well as tools developed for software testing. Our results show that our approach is both feasible and flexible

Context-Aware Access Control Model for Cloud Computing

In view of malicious insider attacks on cloud computing environments, a new Context-Aware Access Control Model for cloud computing (CAACM) was presented. According to the characteristic of cloud computing, we take spatial state, temporal state and platform trust level as context. The model establishes mechanisms of authorization from cloud management role to objects, which enables dynamic activation of role permission by associating cloud management role with context. It also achieves fine-grained access control on cloud objects by supervising the permission of management role in full life cycle. Moreover, it introduces the concept of exclusive managerial role, which extends access control from static protection on resources to dynamic authorization on managerial roles. Further, it describes the approach of role permission activation systematically. CAACM formally proves to be safe and it lays the groundwork for the deployment of CAACM in cloud computing systems

Security Analysis of Role-based Access Control through Program Verification

We propose a novel scheme for proving administrative role-based access control (ARBAC) policies correct with respect to security properties using the powerful abstraction based tools available for program verification. Our scheme uses a combination of abstraction and reduction to program verification to perform security analysis. We convert ARBAC policies to imperative programs that simulate the policy abstractly, and then utilize further abstract-interpretation techniques from program analysis to analyze the programs in order to prove the policies secure. We argue that the aggressive set-abstractions and numerical-abstractions we use are natural and appropriate in the access control setting. We implement our scheme using a tool called VAC that translates ARBAC policies to imperative programs followed by an interval-based static analysis of the program, and show that we can effectively prove access control policies correct. The salient feature of our approach are the abstraction schemes we develop and the reduction of role-based access control security (which has nothing to do with programs) to program verification problems

Security challenges in adaptive e-Health processes

E-health scenarios demand system-based support of process-oriented information systems. As most of the processes in this domain have to be flexibly adapted to meet exceptional or unforeseen situations, flexible process-oriented information systems (POIS) are needed which support ad-hoc deviations at the process instance level. However, e-health scenarios are also very sensitive with regard to privacy issues. Therefore, an adequate access rights management is essential as well. The paper addresses challenges which occur when flexible POIS and adequate rights management have to be put together