Paper Info
Title
Modelling Workflow Executions under Role-Based Authorisation Control
Abstract
Workflows are often used to represent enterprise-type activities, and authorisation control is an important security consideration in enterprise-level applications. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a popular authorisation control scheme under which users are assigned to certain roles, and the roles are associated with permissions. This paper presents a novel mechanism for modelling workflow execution in cluster-based resource pools under Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) schemes. Our modelling approach uses Coloured Timed Petri-Nets, and various authorisation constraints are modelled, including role constraints, temporal constraints, cardinality constraints, Binding of Duty and Separation of Duty constraints, etc. The interactions between workflow authorisation and workflow execution are also captured in the model. In this paper, the modelling mechanism is developed in such a fashion that the construction of the authorisation model for a workflow can be automated. This feature is very helpful in modelling a large collection of authorisation policies or complex workflows. A Petri-net simulation tool, the CPN-Tool, is utilised to implement the developed modelling mechanism and simulate the constructed model. Both system-level performance (e.g., utilisation of resource pools) and application-level performance (e.g., workflow response time) can be obtained from model simulations. This work can be used to plan system capacity and investigate the impact of authorization policies on system and application performance.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1109/SCC.2011.56
IEEE SCC
Keywords
Field
DocType
various authorisation constraint,authorisation policy,authorisation model,popular authorisation control scheme,role-based access control,modelling approach,workflow authorisation,modelling workflow executions,authorisation control,role-based authorisation control,modelling mechanism,workflow execution,color,petri nets,data models,data model,separation of duty,petri net,authorization,rbac,authorisation,role based access control,workflow,availability
Workflow technology,Petri net,Computer science,Role-based access control,Access control,Workflow engine,Workflow management system,Workflow,Separation of duties,Distributed computing
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.45
18
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ligang He154256.73
Kewei Duan2152.37
Xueguang Chen36212.17
Deqing Zou456777.42
Zongfen Han57715.14
Ali Fadavinia640.45
Stephen A. Jarvis7107387.04