Security policy model for ubiquitous social systems

Abstract

Ubiquitous social systems encompass ubiquitous computing, enterprise mobility and consumerization of IT, amplifying the threats associated to these fields. Context-aware security systems have been proposed as solutions for many of these threats. We argue that policy models used by these systems are not suitable for ubiquitous social systems. They lack of sufficient abstractions for specification and analysis of security policies and unnecessarily burden them with context reasoning rules. This can compromise the correctness of security policies and the performance of security systems. To address these issues, we propose a security policy model for ubiquitous social systems. The model defines all possible contextual information as policy abstractions, enabling clear and precise analysis of how they influence access control. Moreover, it takes into account the social related aspect and introduces an object life cycle. As a result, our model provides more intuitive abstractions and facilitates policy specification and context-aware security provisioning.