Abstract

The basic concept of role-based access control (RBAC) is that permissions are associated with roles, and users are made members of appropriate roles, thereby acquiring the roles’ permissions. This idea has been around since the advent of multi-user computing. Until recently, however, RBAC has received little attention from the research community. This chapter describes the motivations, results, and open issues in recent MAC research.

The chapter focuses on four areas. First, RBAC is a multidimensional concept that can range from very simple at one extreme to quite complex and sophisticated at the other. This presents problems in coming up with a definitive model of RBAC. We see how this impasse is resolved by having a family of models which can accommodate all these variations. Second, we discuss how RBAC can be used to manage itself. Recent models developed for this purpose are presented. Third, the flexibility of RBAC can be demonstrated in many ways. Here we show how RBAC can be configured to enforce different variations of classical lattice-based mandatory access controls. Fourth, we describe a conceptual three-tier architecture for specification and enforcement of RBAC. The chapter concludes with a discussion of open issues in RBAC.

Links

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Citation

Sandhu, R. S., 1998. Role-based Access Control, in: Advances in Computers. Elsevier, pp. 237–286. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2458(08)60206-5