Abstract
Policies are being increasingly used for controlling the behavior of complex multi-agent systems. The use of policies allows administrators to specify both agent permissions and duties without changing source code or requiring the consent or cooperation of the agents being governed. However, policy-based control can encounter difficulties when applied to agents that act in pervasive environments characterized by frequent and unpredictable changes. In this case, policies cannot be all specified a priori to face any operative run time situation, but require continuous adjustments to allow agents to behave in a contextually appropriate manner. Current approaches to policy representation have been restrictive in many ways, as they typically follow a subject-centric model, which assigns agent permissions and obligations on the basis of agent role/identity information. However, in the new pervasive scenario the roles/identities of interacting agents may not be known a-priori and most important, may not be informative or sufficiently trustworthy. We claim that the design of policy-based agent systems for pervasive environments requires a paradigm shift from subject-centric to context-centric policy models. This paper discusses some issues concerning the specification and enforcement of context-driven policies and presents a novel context-based policy approach that considers as a first-class principle to guide both policy specification and enforcement. In this perspective, context explicitly appears in the specification of security policies and changes trigger the evaluation process of applicable agent permissions and obligations.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.