Access Control and Trust

Taskin Rahman (_tr8@ntrs.com)
Mon, 10 Nov 1997 13:51:26 -0600

Message-Id: <346765BD.DBC42E6B@ntrs.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 13:51:26 -0600
From: Taskin Rahman <_tr8@ntrs.com>
To: java-security@web2.javasoft.com
Subject: Access Control and Trust

Security team,

My name is Taskin Rahman and I am a software consultant. I am working
on a Java Architecture development team for a financial institution in
Chicago, IL. My responsibilities main include providing security
mechanisms with in the proprietary application framework (including
authentication, trust, and advanced features like secondary
authentication and time-out).

I have briefly reviewed your early 1.2 documentation. ACL white paper
does not as yet specify anything about complex permissions which can
only be determined at run-time and are not very static in nature. I have
designed a Trust Facility framework for this bank that can handle such
scenarios.

Such complex trust policy can be understood better by considering the
following example. Consider principal roles (groups) such as Loan
Approvers and Loan Originators. Your simple trust policy mechanism
allows the definition and interpretation of permissions (or level of
trust) related to a principal whether he/she is an approver, or an
originator, or the inverse and/or combinations. However, there is no way
of defining the permission related to a run-time business object "the
loan" as in the case of a policy that could state that an originator
cannot be an approver of any loan. Simple policies cannot handle such
issues.

I would love to see more thought put in this direction. This will
benefit all and take ACL beyond what it has been for decades.

I sincerely hope that you find this information useful. Please feel free
to contact me directly at the address below.

Taskin Rahman

InfoTech Systems, Inc.
9200 East Prairie Rd
Suite 408
Evanston, IL 60203
Phone: 847-329-7693
Fax: 847-329-7694
email: taskin@mcs.net