Advanced Access Control to Information Systems: Requirements, Compliance and Future Directives

Abstract

The swift cadence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is at the origin of a new generation of open, ubiquitous, large-scale, complex, and heterogeneous information systems (IS). Inextricably linked with this evolution, a number of technical, administrative, and social challenges should be urgently addressed. Security and privacy in critical IS are recognized as crucial issues. The access control is well adopted as a typical solution for securing sensitive resources and ensuring authorized interactions within IS. The chapter deals mainly with the thematic of advanced access control to IS and particularly to relational databases. We present a synthesis of the state of the art of access control that encloses a study of research advancements and challenges. We introduce and discuss requirements and main characteristics for deploying advanced access control infrastructures. Then, we discuss the problem of the conformity of concrete access control infrastructures, and we propose a conformity management scheme for monitoring the compliance between low-level and high-level policies. Finally, we provide and discuss proposals and directives to enhance provably secure and compliant access control schemes as a main characteristic of future IS.