A logical approach to dynamic role-based access control

Abstract

Since its formalization RBAC has become the yardstick for the evaluation of access control formalisms. In order to meet organizational needs, it has been extended along several directions: delegation, separation of duty, history-based access control, etc. We propose in this paper an access control language in which RBAC and all the above-listed extensions can be encoded. In contrast with Cassandra, we have not promoted role management mechanism to first-class citizenship, and have based our model on the assumption that access control systems could be separated into a dynamic part that evolves according to actions performed by users and a static part. We solve in this paper decision problems related to access control for policies expressed in this language. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.