Interoperable Access Control by Means of a Semantic Approach

Nowadays one of the key challenges we are witnessing in software design and implementation is the integration of several legacy systems in order to realize large scale applications that are strongly information-intensive. Practical examples can be found in several application domains, such as healthcare, where large-scale Health Information Systems are currently promoted and under implementation by national and international organizations. Security is a key concern in such projects, and access control is a demanding feature of such software infrastructures under development. In this context, the key issue is not to theorize yet another novel access control model, but to let heterogeneous ones to coexist and interoperate. This is the problem addressed in this work by means of a semantic approach focused on ontologies.