A Flexible Role-Based Delegation Model Using Characteristics of Permissions

Role-Based Access Control(RBAC) has recently received considerable attention as a promising alternative to traditional discretionary and mandatory access controls.[7] RBAC ensures that only authorized users are given access to protected data or resources. A successful marriage of Web and RBAC technology can support effective security in large scale enterprise-wide systems with various organization structures. Most large organizations have some business rules related to access control policy. Delegation of authority is an important one of these rules.[1] RBDM0, RDM2000 and PBDM models are recently published models for role-based delegation. RBDM0 and RDM2000 models deal with user-to-user delegation and total delegation. PBDM supports user-to-user and role-to-role delegations and also supports both role and permission level delegation, which provides great flexibility in authority management. But PBDM does not support constraints in RBAC delegation models, such as separation of duty in user-to-user and role to-role delegation. This paper proposes a new delegation model using characteristics of permissions, in which security administrator can easily perform partial delegation, permission level delegation and restricted inheritance. It supports flexible delegation by dividing a role into sub-roles according to characteristics of permissions assigned to the role and considering delegation and inheritance simultaneously. It provides flexibility in authority management such as multi-step delegation, multi-option revocation and controlled inheritance by including characteristics of PBDM and sub-role hierarchies concept. It also supports constraints such as separation of duty based on permission in user-to-user and role-to-role delegation.