A context-aware security architecture for emerging applications

TLDR

The authors previously introduced a generalized access control model that heavily relies on contextual information for policy definition. The study aims to develop and concretely realize security services for context‑aware environments by designing a system‑level architecture that incorporates contextual data for flexible access control and policy enforcement. The authors implement a system‑level service architecture that integrates contextual information into security services, demonstrating its use to secure sample applications. The architecture delivers enhanced authentication, flexible access control, and adaptive security subsystems that respond to environmental conditions, successfully securing multiple sample applications.

Abstract

We describe an approach to building security services for context-aware environments. Specifically, we focus on the design of security services that incorporate the use of security-relevant "context" to provide flexible access control and policy enforcement. We previously presented a generalized access control model that makes significant use of contextual information in policy definition. This document provides a concrete realization of such a model by presenting a system-level service architecture, as well as early implementation experience with the framework. Through our context-aware security services, our system architecture offers enhanced authentication services, more flexible access control and a security subsystem that can adapt itself based on current conditions in the environment. We discuss our architecture and implementation and show how it can be used to secure several sample applications.