Policy Machine: Towards a General Purpose Enterprise-Wide Operating Environment

Published

August 28, 2014

Author(s)

David F. Ferraiolo, Larry Feldman, Gregory A. Witte

Abstract

The ability to control access to sensitive data in accordance with policy is perhaps the most fundamental security requirement. Despite over four decades of security research, the limited ability for existing access control mechanisms to enforce a comprehensive range of policy persists. While researchers, practitioners and policy makers have specified a large variety of access control policies to address real-world security issues, only a relatively small subset of these policies can be enforced through off-the-shelf technology, and even a smaller subset can be enforced by any one mechanism. This report describes an access control framework, referred to as the Policy Machine (PM), which fundamentally changes the way policy is expressed and enforced. The report gives an overview of the PM and the range of policies that can be specified and enacted. The report also describes the architecture of the PM and the properties of the PM model in detail.

Citation

ITL Bulletin -

NIST Pub Series

ITL Bulletin

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

Access Control, Authorization, Privilege Management, Computer Security

Citation

Ferraiolo, D. , Feldman, L. and Witte, G. (2014), Policy Machine: Towards a General Purpose Enterprise-Wide Operating Environment, ITL Bulletin, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=916386 (Accessed April 19, 2024)