Deploy, adjust and readjust: Supporting dynamic reconfiguration of policy enforcement

Abstract

For large distributed applications, security and performance are two requirements often difficult to satisfy together. Addressing them separately leads more often to fast systems with security holes, rather than secure systems with poor performance. For instance, caching data needed for security decisions can lead to security violations when the data changes faster than the cache can refresh it. Retrieving such fresh data without caching it impacts performance. In this paper, we analyze a subproblem: how to dynamically configure a distributed authorization system when both security and performance requirements change. We examine data caching, retrieval and correlation, and propose a runtime management tool that, with external input, finds and enacts the customizations that satisfy both security and performance needs. Preliminary results show it takes around two seconds to find customization solutions in a setting with over one thousand authorization components. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.