Patterns for Location and Context-based access control

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Patterns for Location and Context-based access
control

• PhD Dissertation Progress Report
• Candidate Alvaro E. Escobar
• Advisors
• Dr. Eduardo Fernandez
• Dr. Maria Petrie

Department of Computer Science and
Engineering Florida Atlantic University, Boca
Raton FL.
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What is not Context?

• Is not simply the state of a predefined
  environment with a fixed set of interaction
  resources.
• Is not Attribute/Value pairs that only define or
  represent or describe users state in a static
  way.

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What is Context?

• The set of facts and/or circumstances that
  surround a situation or event. Google.
• Context is a process of interacting with an
  ever-changing environment composed of
  reconfigurable, migratory, distributed, and
  multi-scale resources. Cou05.
• Context is the logical set of resources
  accessible to a client during a service session
  depending on several factors, such as client
  location, access device capabilities, management
  policies of the access locality, subscribed
  services, user preferences, and level of trust.
  Bel03.
• The view of context-as-process is more flexible
  than the simpler view of context-as-state.

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What is Context made of?

• Two critical sub-processes in context
  areCou05.
• Recognize users goals, preferences and
  activities (a.k.a.Profiles).
• Map them adaptively onto the population of
  available services and resources, filtered by
  access control Policies.

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What is Context made of?

• UML Model 1 Kir05

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What is Context made of?

• UML Model 2 Kir05

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What is a Profile?

• Profiles represent characteristics, capabilities,
  and requirements of users, devices, and service
  components. Bel03.
• User profiles maintain information about personal
  preferences, interests, security requirements,
  and subscribed services.
• Device profiles report the hardware/software
  characteristics of the supported devices.
• Service component profiles describe the interface
  of available service components as well as their
  properties relevant for binding management
  decisions, e.g., whether a service component can
  be copied and migrated over the network.
• Site profiles provide a resource group
  abstraction, by listing all the resources
  currently available at one location.

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What is a Profile?

• Profiles are both Kir05
• Descriptions of users potential contexts.
• Filtering rules that reflect users preferences,
  given a context.

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What is a Policy?

• Policies express the choices of a ruling system
  behavior, in terms of the actions subjects
  can/must operate upon resources.Bel03
• Access control policies specify the actions
  subjects are allowed to perform on resources
  depending on various types of conditions, e.g.,
  subject identity and resource state
• Obligation policies define the actions subjects
  must perform on resources when specified
  conditions occur.

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What is a Policy?

• Filtering process between profiles and events
  Kir05

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What about Access Control (AC)?

• The automatic qualification of accessible
  resources (AC) depends on the client location,
  the current enforced management policies in the
  hosting locality, and the users personal
  preferences (aka profiles). Bel03

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Patterns for Location and Context-based access
control

• References
• Bel03 P. Bellavista, A. Corradi, R. Montanari,
  C. Stefanelli, Context-Aware Middleware for
  Resource Management in the Wireless Internet,
  IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, Vol.
  29, No. 12, December 2003. Page 1086.
• Cou05 J. Coutaz, J. L. Crowley, S. Dobson D.
  Garlan. Context is key. COMMUNICATIONS OF THE
  ACM March 2005/Vol. 48, No. 3. Page 49.
• Sch95 W. N. Schilit. A System Architecture for
  Context-Aware Mobile Computing. PhD thesis
  dissertation. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1995.
• Kir05 M. Kirsch-Pinheiro, M. Villanova-Oliver,
  J. Gensel, H. Martin. Context-Aware Filtering
  for Collaborative Web Systems Adapting the
  Awareness Information to the Users Context 2005
  ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. SAC05, March
  13-17, 2005, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.