Context-Aware Delegation Engine for Granular Access Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current access control systems lack the ability to provide granular control over content access during delegation, allowing delegates to access all content regardless of policies, resulting in 'all or nothing' delegation features.
Innovation Solution
A context-aware delegation engine that enables account owners to define granular delegation policies based on specific contexts, using existing authorization protocols like XACML, SAML, and OAuth 2.0, to limit delegate access to only relevant content, employing context providers for classification and trust analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional access control systems are used for delegation, then delegates can access all content in the account owner's folders, but the account owner cannot provide granular control over specific content access
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments access control into two distinct layers: (1) delegation-level policies that define which folders and content types a delegate can access, and (2) item-level policies that control access to individual items within those folders. This segmentation allows the system to provide both simple folder-level delegation and fine-grained item-level control, resolving the contradiction between delegation simplicity and granular access control.
2Device complexity
If decoupled authorization architectures (XACML, SAML, OAuth 2.0) are implemented, then policy decision is separated from point of use, but these systems do not invoke access control processes for delegated access
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a delegation policy module as an intermediary layer between the existing authorization architecture and the delegated access mechanism. This intermediary module intercepts delegated access requests, evaluates them against delegation policies, and determines whether to grant or deny access. This approach maintains the benefits of decoupled authorization architectures while ensuring reliable policy enforcement for delegated access, which previously bypassed access control processes.
3Productivity
If full permissions are granted to a delegate, then the delegate can access and modify all items in the inbox, but the account owner loses control over sensitive information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by allowing different access policies to be applied to different items within the same folder. Instead of uniform access control across all delegated content, the system enables the account owner to specify item-level policies that grant full permissions to some items while restricting access to sensitive items. This allows the delegate to efficiently access and work with non-sensitive content while the account owner maintains control over sensitive information, thus resolving the contradiction between delegate functionality and security.
Data Source
AI summary
A context-aware delegation engine can enable an account owner to identify granular criteria (or context) that will be used to determine what content a delegate will have access to. The account owner can therefore leverage a wide range of information to dynamically determine whether a delegate will receive access to particular content. The delegation engine can be configured to provide a delegation policy to be evaluated to determine whether a delegate should receive access to particular content. Such a delegation policy can be generated based on input provided by the delegator thereby providing the delegator with fine-grained control over which content will be accessible to a particular delegate. The delegation policy can be structured in accordance with an authorization protocol schema such as XACML, SAML, OAuth 2.0, OpenID, etc. to allow the evaluation of the delegation policy to be performed by a policy decision point in such authorization architectures.