Relation-based Access Control through Semantic Rules

Abstract—Web based social communities are one of the mostwidely used applications nowadays. Ubiquitous computing andaccess capabilities leverage the evolution of highly dynamicsocial communities. Recently, security and privacy concernswithin these communities have increased significantly. This paperaddresses these challenges by controlling access to communityresources exploiting Semantic Web technologies. In this regard,a conceptual community framework and its access controlmechanisms are formalised using the Web Ontology Language.Access to the resources is controlled by defining differential accessrights based on the relationships between the individuals and thecommunities. Instead of an explicit definition, some additionalfacts of the mechanisms are inferred by executing Semantic Webrules using the Jess rule engine over the designed ontology. Theseinformation are then passed back into the ontology to enrich theexisting ontology.Index Terms—Access Control, Rule, Semantics. I. I NTRODUCTION