Semantic based RBAC with negative authorization and permission hierarchy

Abstract

Extending Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model to meet new security requirements is a nontrivial issue. Furthermore, RBAC also needs to be supported with the new Semantic Web standards for adapting itself to the rapidly evolving Semantic Web environment. In this paper, we first propose a variant of RBAC model with negative authorizations both on userrole assignment and permission-role assignment relations, permission hierarchy in terms of object hierarchy is also introduced in this model. Then we use Web Ontology Language (OWL) to express the proposed model, exploiting new features such as disjoint roles which is introduced in the more expressive description logic SROTQ, which underlies the OWL 1.1. © 2011 CRL Publishing Ltd.