Overview and Considerations of Access Control Based on Attribute Encryption: NIST Publishes IR 8450

NIST has published NIST Internal Report (IR) 8450, Overview and Considerations of Access Control Based on Attribute Encryption. Access control based on attribute encryption addresses an issue with traditional public-key encryption (PKE) wherein keys need to dynamically change whenever access policies and/or attributes change, which could cause inefficient system performance. 

Access control based on attribute encryption supports fine-grained access control for encrypted data and is a cryptographic scheme that goes beyond the all-or-nothing approach of public-key encryption. This document reviews the interplay between cryptography and the access control of attribute-based encryption, including the fundamental theories on which the scheme is based; the various main algorithms of IBE, CP-ABE, and KP-ABE; and considerations for deploying access control systems based on encryption.