HoBAC: fundamentals, principles, and policies

Abstract

Access Control (AC) is a critical and challenging security aspect within an IT infrastructure. Different AC models have been proposed to define AC policies that dictate the conditions under which a resource may be accessed by a subject. Attribute- Based Access Control (ABAC) is one of the most promising of those models and has received meaningful attention in recent years. Higher-order Attribute-Based Access Control (HoBAC) is a new AC model we recently proposed as a generalization of ABAC that offers more flexibility when designing AC policies. In this paper, theoretical foundations of HoBAC are further developed and an Access Control System (ACS) and an AC policy framework are presented. An application example related to the Internet of Things (IoT) is used to illustrate the different concepts of HoBAC.