Application of self-adaptive techniques to federated authorization models

Abstract

Authorization infrastructures are an integral part of any network where resources need to be protected. As organisations start to federate access to their resources, authorization infrastructures become increasingly difficult to manage, to a point where relying only on human resources becomes unfeasible. In our work, we propose a Self-Adaptive Authorization Framework (SAAF) that is capable of monitoring the usage of resources, and controlling access to resources through the manipulation of authorization assets (e.g., authorization policies, access rights and sessions), due to the identification of abnormal usage. As part of this work, we explore the use of models for facilitating the autonomic management of federated authorization infrastructures by 1) classifying access behaviour exhibited by users, 2) modelling authorization assets, including usage, for identifying abnormal behaviour, and 3) managing authorization through the adaptation and reflection of modelled authorization assets. SAAF will be evaluated by integrating it into an existing authorization infrastructure that would allow the simulation of abnormal usage scenarios.