Access Rights Administration in Role-Based Security Systems

This paper examines the concept of role-based protection and, in particular, role organization. From basic role relationships, a model for role organization is developed. The role graph model, its operator semantics based on graph theory and algorithms for role administration are proposed. The role graph model, in our view, presents a very generalized form of role organization for access rights administration. It is shown how the model simulates other organizational structures such as hierarchies [TDH92] and privilege graphs [Bal90].