OSDM: An Organizational Supervised Delegation Model for RBAC

Abstract

The dynamic nature of operations in organizations has led to an interest in roles and permissions delegation to enable a seamless continuity of business. Delegation involves assigning a given set of access rights from one user to another. In existing role delegation models, delegation is often authorized and controlled by a relation that specifies who can delegate to whom. The usage of such relations in delegation models has some disadvantages; such as complexity of maintenance, error proneness, inconsistencies and inabilities to define some organizational policies related to delegation. In this paper, we propose a new delegation model that depends on organizational lines of authority to authorize and control delegation. The main advantages of this approach are that it simplifies the management of delegation authorization and complies with organizational behavior. Furthermore, it eliminates inconsistencies related to changes to roles and permissions.