A Presentation of Access Control Methods

Methods of enforcing distributed access control are one of the most debated topics of computer security. From worries about password theft to viruses and spam, both computer security specialists and everyday users agree that safe guarding data privacy has become a priority for those wishing to connect to the Internet. In this chapter we give the reader a synopsis of access control trends, how it all began and where we think it is heading. We discuss the methods that have been proposed, comparing and analyzing each in turn with the aim of drawing the reader’s attention to the fact the access control mechanisms are typically designed for relatively static scenarios and that increasingly hybrid scenarios that cannot be predicted apriori, need to be handled by adaptive security mechanisms or models.