scholarly journals An ECDSA Approach to Access Control in Knowledge Management Systems Using Blockchain

Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Nyame ◽  
Zhiguang Qin ◽  
Kwame Opuni-Boachie Obour Agyekum ◽  
Emmanuel Boateng Sifah

Access control has become problematic in several organizations because of the difficulty in establishing security and preventing malicious users from mimicking roles. Moreover, there is no flexibility among users in the participation in their roles, and even controlling them. Several role-based access control (RBAC) mechanisms have been proposed to alleviate these problems, but the security has not been fully realized. In this work, however, we present an RBAC model based on blockchain technology to enhance user authentication before knowledge is accessed and utilized in a knowledge management system (KMS). Our blockchain-based system model and the smart contract ensure that transparency and knowledge resource immutability are achieved. We also present smart contract algorithms and discussions about the model. As an essential part of RBAC model applied to KMS environment, trust is ensured in the network. Evaluation results show that our system is efficient.

Author(s):  
Laurent Gomez ◽  
Annett Laube ◽  
Alessandro Sorniotti

Access control is the process of granting permissions in accordance to an authorization policy. Mobile and ubiquitous environments challenge classical access control solutions like Role-Based Access Control. The use of context-information during policy definition and access control enforcement offers more adaptability and flexibility needed for these environments. When it comes to low-power devices, such as wireless sensor networks, access control enforcement is normally too heavy for such resource-constrained devices. Lightweight cryptography allows encrypting the data right from its production and the access is therefore intrinsically restricted. In addition, all access control mechanisms require an authenticated user. Traditionally, user authentication is performed by means of a combination of authentication factors, statically specified in the access control policy of the authorization service. Within ubiquitous and mobile environment, there is a clear need for a flexible user authentication using the available authentication factors. In this chapter, different new techniques to ensure access control are discussed and compared to the state-of-the-art.


Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 334
Author(s):  
Gabriel Nyame ◽  
Zhiguang Qin

Role-based access control (RBAC) continues to gain popularity in the management of authorization concerning access to knowledge assets in organizations. As a socio-technical concept, the notion of role in RBAC has been overemphasized, while very little attention is given to the precursors: role strain, role ambiguity, and role conflict. These constructs provide more significant insights into RBAC design in Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). KMS is the technology-based knowledge management tool used to acquire, store, share, and apply knowledge for improved collaboration and knowledge-value creation. In this paper, we propose eight propositions that require future research concerning the RBAC system for knowledge security. In addition, we propose a model that integrates these precursors and RBAC to deepen the understanding of these constructs. Further, we examine these precursory constructs in a socio-technical fashion relative to RBAC in the organizational context and the status–role relationship effects. We carried out conceptual analysis and synthesis of the relevant literature, and present a model that involves the three essential precursors that play crucial roles in role mining and engineering in RBAC design. Using an illustrative case study of two companies where 63 IT professionals participated in the study, the study established that the precursors positively and significantly increase the intractability of the RBAC system design. Our framework draws attention to both the management of organizations and RBAC system developers about the need to consider and analyze the precursors thoroughly before initiating the processes of policy engineering, role mining, and role engineering. The propositions stated in this study are important considerations for future work.


2011 ◽  
Vol 403-408 ◽  
pp. 2477-2480
Author(s):  
Zhen Wu Wang

The normal role-based access control (RBAC) model decouples users and permissions through roles,and different software systems have different implementation syteles.The paper proposes an engine model which can configure the RBAC management systems flexibly.It is a configuration tool to generate different RBAC management systems which meet different users’ requirements. The practice proves that the engine model can improve the efficiency and quality of software development. The role-based access control model decouples users and permissions through roles in order to simplify authorized operations and safety management[1]. Many literatures[2-6] discuss the RBAC model from different aspects. Some literatures[2-3] add new elements to the normal RBAC model,and these models are unidimensional according to the manipulated resources.For example, the NIST RBAC reference model [2] extends and standardize the RBAC96 [1] model reasonably.Some literatures[4-5] introduce time property to RBAC model and they are two-dimensional models according to the manipulated resources.Literature[6] furtherly add visual data muster to RBAC model and proposes a three-dimensional access control model. All of these models only discuss access control model theoretically,and different role-based access control modules in software systems have different instantiation sytles.For example, a RBAC module in one software system can not meet the access control requirements in another system because different RBAC modules have different table fields in order to realize certain requirements. This paper proposes a flexible role-based access control engine which can configure the RBAC module for different systmes according to each customer’s requirement.The engine is a configuration tool and it can realize various RBAC modules which have different table fields in database.The paper is organized as follows.Section I introduces the basic concepts of the NIST RBAC model;Seciton II details the description of RBAC engine model and gives the configuration steps using this engine to generate RBAC instances,and at last section III gives an example and concludes the paper.


Author(s):  
Laurent Gomez ◽  
Annett Laube ◽  
Alessandro Sorniotti

Access control is the process of granting permissions in accordance to an authorization policy. Mobile and ubiquitous environments challenge classical access control solutions like Role-Based Access Control. The use of context-information during policy definition and access control enforcement offers more adaptability and flexibility needed for these environments. When it comes to low-power devices, such as wireless sensor networks, access control enforcement is normally too heavy for such resourceconstrained devices. Lightweight cryptography allows encrypting the data right from its production and the access is therefore intrinsically restricted. In addition, all access control mechanisms require an authenticated user. Traditionally, user authentication is performed by means of a combination of authentication factors, statically specified in the access control policy of the authorization service. Within ubiquitous and mobile environment, there is a clear need for a flexible user authentication using the available authentication factors. In this chapter, different new techniques to ensure access control are discussed and compared to the state-of-the-art.


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