Audit-based compliance control

  • Authors:

  • J. G. Cederquist;R. Corin;M. A. C. Dekker;S. Etalle;J. I. den Hartog;G. Lenzini

  • Affiliations:

  • Technical University of Lisbon, SQIG—IT, IST, Lisbon, Portugal;University of Twente, Computer Science Department, Twente, The Netherlands;TNO ICT, Security Group, Delft, The Netherlands;University of Twente, Computer Science Department, Twente, The Netherlands;University of Twente, Computer Science Department, Twente, The Netherlands;Telematica Instituut, Enschede, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Information Security
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

In this paper we introduce a new framework for controlling compliance to discretionary access control policies [Cederquist et al. in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks (POLICY), 2005; Corin et al. in Proceedings of the IFIP Workshop on Formal Aspects in Security and Trust (FAST), 2004]. The framework consists of a simple policy language, modeling ownership of data and administrative policies. Users can create documents, and authorize others to process the documents. To control compliance to the document policies, we define a formal audit procedure by which users may be audited and asked to justify that an action was in compliance with a policy. In this paper we focus on the implementation of our framework. We present a formal proof system, which was only informally described in earlier work. We derive an important tractability result (a cut-elimination theorem), and we use this result to implement a proof-finder, a key component in this framework. We argue that in a number of settings, such as collaborative work environments, where a small group of users create and manage document in a decentralized way, our framework is a more flexible approach for controlling the compliance to policies.