A Comparative Analysis of Access Control Policy Modeling Approaches

Abstract

Access control policies (ACPs) characterize the high-level rules according to which the access control of a system is regulated. Generally they are defined separately from the functional requirements (FRs) of an application and added to the system as an afterthought after being built. But, many problems arose during the integration of ACPs and FRs. Hence, over the past years, researchers have suggested for the modifying the design phase to include an earlier focus on access control issues through various modeling techniques. This paper reviews the important approaches in ACP modeling and makes a comparative analysis of the advantages and limitations of those techniques especially in addressing complex ACPs. Based on the comparative analysis, this paper presents directions for further work needed in handling the intricate nature of today’s ACPs.