Organization Based Access Control Research Articles

A model-based system engineering approach to manage railway safety-related decisions

The safety assessment of Safety Critical Systems (SCSs) is a challenging task since it involves different actors and a combination of several knowledge domains. This increases the complexity of the integration of safety requirements into the design model. Consequently, there is a need for a shared model with an unambiguous terminology aiming to avoid misunderstandings between both safety and design teams. In this paper, we propose a model-based system engineering approach in order to support the goal-oriented safety reasoning and to provide a common model between both safety and requirement engineering driven by goals. Furthermore, the present study considers the safety rules development process based on the Organization-based Access Control (Or-BAC) model, which is normally used to improve the security of the information systems. Then, the common vocabulary proposed for the inter- pretation of the considered notions of domains is defined. Moreover, safety requirements are expressed with a high level of abstraction according to the required railway knowledge and the requirement trace- ability process is considered through an up-bottom reasoning using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams. The proposed approach aims to provide a methodology able to identify safety conditions in order to anticipate risks and to make better safety-related decisions. Finally, the proposed methodology is evaluated through a real accident scenario analysis in order to validate its adaptability to represent real critical situations.

An Access Control Model based on the concepts of Organization and Service for Large Infrastructures

We present in this paper a new access control model for large infrastructures, S-OrBAC (Service Organization Based Access Control), based on the two fundamental concepts that are Organization and Service. The need for access control systems in large infrastructures is motivated by the business growth and the expansion of user’s connection to different resources and data. We provide a general view on the concept of service within large infrastructures, and then introduce the different entities of the model S-OrBAC. Finally, we give a use case application for the model in a university establishment providing multiservice.

Preserving confidentiality and privacy of the patient’s EHR using the OrBAC and AES in cloud environment*

Recently, the use of cloud computing has been spread in various fields. One of the striking areas is the healthcare domain where the patient’s data are outsourced to the cloud storage as Electronic Health Record (EHR). Cloud computing provides the EHR with valuable benefits, but at the same time it brings some security concerns regarding the privacy and confidentiality of the patient data. In this paper, we propose a cloud based EHR system exploiting the AES cryptography with the organization-based access control. In our system, the AES encryption is performed twice to provide two layers of security and confidentiality to the EHR data which is referred to as primary and temporary encryption. The proposed system ensures the privacy of the patient along with the confidentiality of medical information in both normal and emergency situations. The security concerns of our system are analyzed based on the basic security requirements for the cloud based EHR systems. The proposed system is implemented and its performance is evaluated through experiments to prove its effectiveness for its use in resource-constrained devices.

OrBAC from access control model to access usage model

The purpose based access control model has been proposed recently to restrict the access to the sensitive data which are out of control of their owner. This model can be enforced by ensuring that the user who wants to access the private data will respect the specific plan of tasks/actions that leads to achieving the intended objective to use these data. The Organization Based Access Control (OrBAC) model is suitable to integrate this principle, but in a dynamic environment such as the cloud computing, the authorization rules should be expressed in flexible way, and they may include optional tasks which can be skipped in some cases in order to adapt temporarily to the changes in the context. To meet these requirements, we propose in this paper a new extension of the OrBAC model using the temporal nonmonotonic description logic ( $\textit {TL-JClassic}^{+}_{\delta \epsilon }$ ) that allows to represent formally the policy rules as hierarchical planning that includes a set of ordered tasks that may admit exceptions in special cases and when the access request is made, the access control system depending on the current context will infer dynamically the appropriate sequence of actions that can be performed by subject who demands access to private data that may be outsourced into the cloud.

Spatial and Temporal Organization Based Access Control for Wireless Network as a Component of Security Requirements

The standard wireless local area network is the technology of connecting computers and myriad electronic devices to each other and to the Internet. The three major benefits that Wi-Fi networks offer are; global accessibility, ease of communication and cost effective. In such infrastructures, there is no physical method to restrict a system in radio range to be a member of a wireless network. For this reason, the definition of a security policy is required and must be able to meet a range of requirements, including those related to access control. In this paper, we propose an application of the “organization based access control model” (OrBAC) in the context of Wi-Fi networks, a case study and a simulation for an organization “faculty”. The use of OrBAC with location and temporal constraints allows to control access to resources or services via wireless network, based on the requester’s role in the Organization, his location and the time of the access request. The proposed solution limits the possibilities of attacks because each user has only access rights allowing him to perform his tasks within the organization.

Achieving dynamicity in security policies enforcement using aspects

The dynamic configuration and evolution of large-scale heterogeneous systems has made the enforcement of security requirements one of the most critical phases throughout the system development lifecycle. In this paper, we propose a framework architecture to associate the security policies with the specification and the execution phases of applications defined for these systems. Our proposed framework is based on an aspect-oriented programming approach and on the organization-based access control model to dynamically enforce and manage the access and the usage control. The deployment of the framework modules, proposed in this paper, takes into account the changes that may occur in the security policy during the application execution. We also present the implementation as well as the evaluation of our proposition.

Encoding a T-RBAC Model for E-Learning Platform on ORBAC Model

with rapid development and increase in the amount of available resources in E-learning platforms, the need to design new architecture for such systems has become inevitable to improve the search quality and simplifying ways to take online courses. The integration of multi-agent systems has played a very important role in developing open, interactive and distributed learning systems. A lot of research in E-learning and multi-agent system have been put into developing infrastructure and providing content, security and trust issues have hardly ever been considered worth knowing that security issues may endanger the success of these platforms. The application of a control access policy, as one of the most important aspects of security, in E-learning platform based on multi agent systems , plays an important role to secure interaction with agents/users and reinforcing it with the integration of trust level .The work of this paper is to encode a new access control model developed in previous works based on ‘’ role based access control model ‘’ and trust level, on ‘’Organization based access control model’’ to improve the security level in E-learning platforms based on multi-agent systems. The encoded model is implemented and evaluated by “MotOrbac” tool, in order to define its validity context and limitations for a large and extended deployment.

Integrity-OrBAC: a new model to preserve Critical Infrastructures integrity

Nations development depends heavily on the proper functioning of their Critical Infrastructures (CIs). Their security requirements are very important since small dysfunctions can deeply affect nation stability. We focus on their integrity need because Critical Information Infrastructures (CIIs) manipulate data that must be correct. The differentiation of their various elements security needs is essential to their protection. Unfortunately, existent access control models do not completely meet the CIIs requirements for many reasons. The Organization-Based Access Control (OrBAC) model, however, presents several strengths but it does neither consider the differentiation concept nor cope with integrity issues. In this paper, we work to enrich OrBAC with integrity mechanisms and means of differentiation. Integrity-OrBAC (I-OrBAC) is our extension and it is a proactive model. I-OrBAC is a multi-integrity level model that enables quantifying the integrity needs of each CII element, in term of credibility or criticality, to take optimal access control decisions. Given a triple (context, view and activity), we propose a way to determine the best subjects of the role selected to perform the activity through the calculation of integrity level thresholds. This idea is illustrated by a security policy example. We also propose a role priority concept and an algorithm that make security policies more flexible. The algorithm is described by an inference system. Regarding the implementation, we extend XACML to reflect the properties of our entities. Steps for access decision-making are detailed and scenarios used to test the implementation are presented.

OB4LAC: An Organization-based Access Control Model for E-government System

Following the emergency of multi-level, complex and distributed information systems, the traditional RBAC model becomes more and more weak and incompetent. Currently, the research of RBAC model mainly focused on building a suitable role hierarchy, although played a certain effect it still have many problems. Through the research aiming at organizations and their characters, we believe that the reasons that cause the present problems are due to the conflict in working patterns between the RBAC model and the physical world. Thus, we propose a new access control method-Organization Based Access Control Method and the specific model- OB4LAC model. This article analyzes the constituent members, formal specification, sub-models UPA, PORA, PERA and RRA of OB4LAC, and also gives the specific process in access operations and business collaboration among multi-organizations. Through the test in many complex E-government systems, OB4LAC model achievesgood results.

An Organization-Based Access Control Model for Workflow and Dynamic Constraints Implementation

An Organization-Based Access Control Model for Workflow and Dynamic Constraints Implementation

Concrete- and abstract-based access control

Access control models allow expressing access control rules (also called policies) stating that certain subjects (or users) have or do not have the right (or privilege) to access certain objects in order to execute certain actions under certain conditions. Several existing models allow expressing rules only for specific subjects, objects and actions. Role-based access control (RBAC) introduced the notion of role, which is an abstraction over subjects. Organization-based access control (OrBAC) generalized further, by allowing specifying rules involving abstract subjects, abstract actions and abstract objects. We propose here a model that allows expressing rules involving any combinations of abstract or concrete subjects, actions and objects, as well as conditions over them. For this reason, our model is called concrete- and abstract-based access control model (CABAC). The semantics of our model is expressed in terms of first order predicate logic. Temporal, spatial, knowledge and historical contexts can be specified and combined. We show how in this model it is possible to express hierarchies of subjects, objects and actions as well as propagation of policies over hierarchies. Further, while in most models subjects, objects and actions, whether concrete or abstract, must be specified statically, it is possible in our model to specify subjects, actions and objects dynamically, i.e., according to conditions that can vary over time. Access control rules can also be explicitly revoked and subjected to different types of constraints, among which are cardinality constraints and separation of duties.

Dynamic deployment of context-aware access control policies for constrained security devices

Abstract Securing the access to a server, guaranteeing a certain level of protection over an encrypted communication channel, executing particular counter measures when attacks are detected are examples of security requirements. Such requirements are identified based on organizational purposes and expectations in terms of resource access and availability and also on system vulnerabilities and threats. All these requirements belong to the so-called security policy. Deploying the policy means enforcing, i.e., configuring, those security components and mechanisms so that the system behavior be finally the one specified by the policy. The deployment issue becomes more difficult as the growing organizational requirements and expectations generally leave behind the integration of new security functionalities in the information system: the information system will not always embed the necessary security functionalities for the proper deployment of contextual security requirements. To overcome this issue, our solution is based on a central entity approach which takes in charge unmanaged contextual requirements and dynamically redeploys the policy when context changes are detected by this central entity. We also present an improvement over the OrBAC (Organization-Based Access Control) model. Up to now, a controller based on a contextual OrBAC policy is passive, in the sense that it assumes policy evaluation triggered by access requests. Therefore, it does not allow reasoning about policy state evolution when actions occur. The modifications introduced by our work overcome this limitation and provide a proactive version of the model by integrating concepts from action specification languages.

A dynamic access control model

The proposed dynamic access control model is based on description logic (DL) augmented with a default (?) and an exception (?) operator to capture context features. Currently, this model has an expressivity almost comparable to OrBAC system (OrBAC (Organization Based Access Control) has been formalized in first order logic), all features needed for real attribution of authorization, i.e., assigning authorization to a user according to its role in an organization in a given context. A notable difference of our model is the allowing of composed context, the addition of new context and the deduction of new authorization depending on context.

A Framework for Translating a High Level Security Policy into Low Level Security Mechanisms

A Framework for Translating a High Level Security Policy into Low Level Security MechanismsSecurity policies have different components; firewall, active directory, and IDS are some examples of these components. Enforcement of network security policies to low level security mechanisms faces some essential difficulties. Consistency, verification, and maintenance are the major ones of these difficulties. One approach to overcome these difficulties is to automate the process of translation of high level security policy into low level security mechanisms. This paper introduces a framework of an automation process that translates a high level security policy into low level security mechanisms. The framework is described in terms of three phases; in the first phase all network assets are categorized according to their roles in the network security and relations between them are identified to constitute the network security model. This proposed model is based on organization based access control (OrBAC). However, the proposed model extend the OrBAC model to include not only access control policy but also some other administrative security policies like auditing policy. Besides, the proposed model enables matching of each rule of the high level security policy with the corresponding ones of the low level security policy. Through the second phase of the proposed framework, the high level security policy is mapped into the network security model. The second phase could be considered as a translation of the high level security policy into an intermediate model level. Finally, the intermediate model level is translated automatically into low level security mechanism. The paper illustrates the applicability of proposed approach through an application example.

Modeling contextual security policies

As computer infrastructures become more complex, security models must provide means to handle more flexible and dynamic requirements. In the Organization Based Access Control (OrBAC) model, it is p...

High Level Conflict Management Strategies in Advanced Access Control Models

Specifying a security policy that includes both permissions and prohibitions, may lead to conflicts. This corresponds to a situation where a subject is both permitted and prohibited to perform a given action on a given object. We adopt a comparative approach to investigate this problem. We first investigate access control models based on rules, called Rule-BAC, and present weaknesses that arise when we try to manage conflicts in this model. In particular, Rule-BAC models fail to provide decidable solution to redundant rules and potential conflicts problems. Then, we show how a more structured model, say OR-BAC (Organization Based Access Control), gifted with inheritance mechanism make redundant rules and potential conflict problems tractable in polynomial time.