Controlling Break-the-Glass through Alignment

Abstract

Modern IT systems have to deal with unpredictable situations and exceptions more and more often. In contrast, security mechanisms are usually very rigid. Functionality like break-the-glass is thus employed to allow users to bypass security mechanisms in case of emergencies. However, break-the-glass introduces a weak point in the system. In this paper, we present a flexible framework for controlling the use of break-the-glass using the notion of alignments. The framework measures to what extent a process execution diverges from the specification (i.e., using optimal alignments) and revokes the exceptional permissions granted to cope with the emergency when the severity of deviations cannot be tolerated. For the quantification of the severity of deviations, we extend alignment-based deviation analysis techniques by supporting the detection of high-level deviations such as activity replacements and swaps, hence providing a more accurate diagnosis of deviations than classical optimal alignments.