Model driven security: unification of authorization models for fine-grain access control

The research vision of the Unified Component Meta Model Framework (Uniframe) is to develop infrastructure for components that enables a plug and play component environment where the security contracts are a part of the component description and the security aware middleware is generated by the component integration toolkits. That is, the component providers will define security contracts in addition to the functional contracts. These security contracts will be used to analyze the ability of a service to meet the security constraints when used in a composition of components. A difficulty in progressing the security related aspects of this infrastructure is the lack of a unified access control model that can be leveraged to identify protected resources and access control points at the model level. Existing component technologies utilize various mechanisms for specifying security constraints. This paper will explore issues related to expressing access control requirements of components and the resources they manage. It proposes a platform independent model (PIM) for the access control that can be leveraged to parameterize domain models. It also outlines the analysis necessary to progress a standard transformation from this PIM to three existing platform specific models (PSMs).

1. Introduction

Enterprises are increasingly dependent upon multiple middleware technologies that enable new business paradigms by weaving together legacy systems with advanced technology. Component-based system integration supports core business functionality, integrates business processes and enables companies to communicate with customers, suppliers, and business partners. The Unified Component Meta-Model Framework (UniFrame) [1] attempts to unify distributed component models under a common meta-model for the purpose of enabling the discovery, interoperability, and collaboration of components via generative software techniques. This research targets the dynamic assembly of distributed software systems from components developed using different component models, and explores how the quality of service (QoS) requirements, such as security, influence the design of components and their compositions. The inherent complexity of such integrations introduces significant challenges for controlling access to application resources (business, customer and personal information as well as product and application features). This paper expands on our previous work [2], [3] to explore how Model Driven Architecture techniques may be used for an integration of the access control solutions in heterogeneous environments.