An Audit-Integrated ARBAC Model

Abstract

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model is the main-stream access control model. When addressing large-scale and distributed application, the highest Security Administrator(SA) of RBAC model always try to transfer his management authority to his inferior SAs to decrease his workload. However, How to ensure that these inferior SAs perform their management authorities legally is a big problem. Although there are a technology framework of administrative RBAC model, named ARBAC97, the supervise mechanism and audit mechanism on the utilization of transferred authorities is incomplete in RBAC model. In this research, an audit-integrated ARBAC (au-ARBAC) model is presented. In the au-ARBAC model, a right and liability mechanism has been set up, an audit role is defined and auditing permission is assigned to this role. At the same time, we put forwards two types basic audit business: routine audit and accident audit. As to accident audit, a decision process for division of responsibility is designed to clarify the responsibility of wrongdoer SAs. The Au-ARBAC model can help to improve the Consciousness of authorization responsibility and to perform their management authorities responsibly and legally.