Access Control in Document-centric Workflow Systems An Agent-based Approach

Workflow Systems are increasingly being used to streamline organizations' business processes. During the execution of business processes, information often traverses organizations' networks as documents. With the proliferation of the Internet, documents travel across open networks. These documents can, however, contain potentially sensitive information. The documents used in Workflow Systems must therefore be protected from unauthorized access. This paper enumerates three access control requirements of workflow environments, including the well-known principle of separation of duty. Thereafter the CSAC (Context-sensitive Access Control) model is presented to address the requirements. In conclusion it is demonstrated how this model can be implemented in an agent-based architecture.