Self-Adaptive Authorization Framework for Policy Based RBAC/ABAC Models

Authorization systems are an integral part of any network where resources need to be protected. They act as the gateway for providing (or denying) subjects (users) access to resources. As networks expand and organisations start to federate access to their resources, authorization infrastructures become increasingly difficult to manage. In this paper, we explore the potential of self-adaptive authorization as a means to automate the management of the access control configuration. We propose a Self-Adaptive Authorization Framework (SAAF) that is capable of managing any policy based distributed RBAC/ABAC authorization infrastructure. SAAF relies on a feedback control loop to monitor decisions (by policy decision points) of a target authorization infrastructure. These decisions are analysed to form a view of the subject's behaviour to decide whether to adapt the target authorization infrastructure. Adaptations are made in order to either endorse or restrict the identified behaviour, e.g. by loosening or tightening the current authorization policy. We demonstrate in terms of representative scenarios SAAF's ability for detecting abnormal behaviour, such as, misuse of access to system resources, proposing solutions that either prevent/endorse such behaviour, applying a cost function to each of these solutions, and executing the adaptive changes against a target authorization infrastructure.