Dynamic enforcement of abstract separation of duty constraints

Abstract

Separation of Duties (SoD) aims to prevent fraud and errors by distributing tasks and associated privileges among multiple users. Li and Wang proposed an algebra (SoDA) for specifying SoD requirements, which is both expressive in the requirements it formalizes and abstract in that it is not bound to any specific workflow model. In this paper, we both generalize SoDA and map it to enforcement mechanisms. First, we increase SoDA's expressiveness by extending its semantics to multisets. This better suits policy enforcement over workflows, where users may execute multiple tasks. Second, we further generalize SoDA to allow for changing role assignments. This lifts the strong restriction that authorizations do not change during workflow execution. Finally, we map SoDA terms to CSP processes, taking advantage of CSP's operational semantics to provide the critical link between abstract specifications of SoD requirements by SoDA terms and runtime-enforcement mechanisms. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.