15th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference
December 6-10, 1999
Phoenix, Arizona


A Resource Access Decision Service for CORBA-based Distributed Systems

Konstantin Beznosov, beznosov@cs.fiu.edu
Yi Deng
Bob Blakley
Carol Burt
John Barkley

Baptist Health Systems of South Florida (BHSSF), USA

Decoupling authorization logic from application logic allows applications with fine-grain access control requirements to be independent from a particular access control policy and from factors that are used in authorization decisions as well as access control models, no matter how dynamic those polices and factors are. It also enables elaborate and consistent access control policies across heterogeneous systems. We present design of a service for resource access authorization in distributed systems. The service enables to decouple authorization logic from application functionality. Although the described service is based on CORBA technology, the design approach can be successfully used in any distributed computing environment.