Panel: The next generation of acess control models (panel session)

Abstract

Research on access control models was started in the 1960s and 1970s by the two thrusts of mandatory and discretionary access control. Mandatory access control (MAC) came from the military and national security arenas whereas discretionary access control (DAC) had its roots in academic and commercial research laboratories. These two thrusts were dominant through the 1970s and 1980s almost to exclusion of any other approach to access control models. In the 1990s we have seen a dramatic shift towards pragmatism. The dominant access-control model of the 1990s is role-based access control (RBAC). It is now understood that RBAC encompasses MAC and DAC as special cases and goes beyond them in providing a policy-neutral framework. This SACMAT meeting has evolved from a highly successful and productive series of ACM workshops on RBAC. This panel will address the basic question of where do we go next with access control models. Do we need additional models or can we simply evolve the current set of RBAC models? Is RBAC fundamentally deficient in some way? Where should be go in terms of standards? Is there useful formal and theoretical work to be done in the access control models arena? The first meeting with the title SACMAT is a fitting place to address these questions.