Modeling Access Control on Streaming Data in Apache Storm

Abstract

Abstract Streaming analytics on real-time data is very important in the IOT world since analytics, decisions and operations have to be done in real-time for practical applicability. In such scenarios, one key consideration is the security of the real-time stream. Stream security as in other network security can be modeled using the CIA (Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability) model [1]. However, most practical implementations just take care of the first two aspects viz Confidentiality and Integrity using standard techniques such as encryption and signatures. In this paper, we introduce an access control mechanism on the stream that annotates the stream with additional security metadata. This metadata can be used to allow/deny access to elements in the stream and also protect the privacy of the data. We demonstrate a work in progress implementation of the access control mechanism on the popular streaming engine Apache Storm [2] and demonstrate how access control can be modeled and implemented on streaming data.