TY - GEN
T1 - The RSL99 Language for Role-Based Separation of Duty Constraints
AU - Ahn, Gail Joon
AU - Sandhu, Ravi
N1 - Funding Information:
*This work is partially supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency at the Laboratory for Information Security Technology at George Mason University. All correspondence should be addressed to Ravi Sandhu, ISE Department, Mail Stop 4A4, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, saudhuQisse.gmu.edu, wwv.list.gmu.edu.
Publisher Copyright:
© 1999 ACM.
PY - 1999
Y1 - 1999
N2 - Separation of duty (SOD) is a fundamental technique for prevention of fraud and errors, known and practiced long before the existence of computers. It is discussed at several places in the literature, but there has been little work on specifying SOD policies in a systematic way. This paper describes a framework for specifying separation of duty and conflict of interest policies in role-based systems. To specify these policies, we need an appropriate language. We propose an intuitive formal language which uses system functions and sets as its basic elements. The semantics for this language is defined by its translation to a restricted form of first order predicate logic. We show how previously identified SOD properties can be expressed in our language. Moreover, we show there are other significant SOD properties which have not been previously identified in the literature. Unlike much of the previous work, this paper deals with SOD in the presence of role hierarchies. Our work shows that there are many alternate formulations of even the simplest SOD properties, with varying degree of flexibility and assurance. Our language provides us a rigorous foundation for systematic study of SOD properties.
AB - Separation of duty (SOD) is a fundamental technique for prevention of fraud and errors, known and practiced long before the existence of computers. It is discussed at several places in the literature, but there has been little work on specifying SOD policies in a systematic way. This paper describes a framework for specifying separation of duty and conflict of interest policies in role-based systems. To specify these policies, we need an appropriate language. We propose an intuitive formal language which uses system functions and sets as its basic elements. The semantics for this language is defined by its translation to a restricted form of first order predicate logic. We show how previously identified SOD properties can be expressed in our language. Moreover, we show there are other significant SOD properties which have not been previously identified in the literature. Unlike much of the previous work, this paper deals with SOD in the presence of role hierarchies. Our work shows that there are many alternate formulations of even the simplest SOD properties, with varying degree of flexibility and assurance. Our language provides us a rigorous foundation for systematic study of SOD properties.
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U2 - 10.1145/319171.319176
DO - 10.1145/319171.319176
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85031151129
T3 - RBAC 1999 - Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access Control
SP - 43
EP - 54
BT - RBAC 1999 - Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access Control
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 4th ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access Control, RBAC 1999
Y2 - 28 October 1999 through 29 October 1999
ER -