Paper Type

Complete Research Paper

Description

In the recent past, the application of role-based access control for streamlining Identity and Access Management in organizations has gained significant importance in research and practice. After the initial setup of a role model, the central challenge is its operative management and strategic maintenance. In practice, organizations typically struggle with a high number of potentially outdated and erroneous role definitions leading to security vulnerabilities and compliance violations. Applying a process-oriented approach for assessing and optimizing role definitions is mandatory to keep a role model usable and up to date. Existing research on role system maintenance only provides a limited technical perspective without focusing on the required guidance and applicability in practice. This paper closes the existing gap by proposing ROPM, a structured Role Optimization Process Model for improving the quality of existing role definitions. Based on comprehensive tool support it automates role optimization activities and integrates both, a technical as well as a business-oriented perspective. It is based on the iterative application of role cleansing and role model extension activities in order to reduce erroneous role definitions and (re-)model roles according to organizational requirements. In order to underline applicability, this paper provides a naturalistic evaluation based on real-life data.

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ROLE MODEL OPTIMIZATION FOR SECURE ROLE-BASED IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

In the recent past, the application of role-based access control for streamlining Identity and Access Management in organizations has gained significant importance in research and practice. After the initial setup of a role model, the central challenge is its operative management and strategic maintenance. In practice, organizations typically struggle with a high number of potentially outdated and erroneous role definitions leading to security vulnerabilities and compliance violations. Applying a process-oriented approach for assessing and optimizing role definitions is mandatory to keep a role model usable and up to date. Existing research on role system maintenance only provides a limited technical perspective without focusing on the required guidance and applicability in practice. This paper closes the existing gap by proposing ROPM, a structured Role Optimization Process Model for improving the quality of existing role definitions. Based on comprehensive tool support it automates role optimization activities and integrates both, a technical as well as a business-oriented perspective. It is based on the iterative application of role cleansing and role model extension activities in order to reduce erroneous role definitions and (re-)model roles according to organizational requirements. In order to underline applicability, this paper provides a naturalistic evaluation based on real-life data.