Hierarchical Document Access Control via Organizational Levels
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current access control mechanisms in document management systems fail to differentiate access levels among parties from the same organization, leading to unnecessary access to irrelevant documents and difficulty in finding specific documents, as role-based access control does not account for organizational differences.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method that uses access counters and access levels to control document access, where access counters are incremented with each version change and access levels determine the extent of access, and considering organizational hierarchies to authorize document access, allowing only authorized parties to access the latest version of documents.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If role-based access control is used where every user is assigned a role and all users of a given role have the same access to documents, then access control is simplified and easier to implement, but parties with the same role but from different organizations have the same access to documents potentially irrespective of whether the documents are associated with the organizations in question, leading to unnecessary access to irrelevant documents
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the access control system into multiple hierarchical levels: organization level, department level, and role level. Each level contributes to the final access decision, allowing the system to maintain simplicity at each individual level while achieving precise control when all levels are combined. The access counter mechanism is also segmented to track different types of access (view, edit, approve) separately.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by making access rights specific to particular organizations and departments rather than applying uniform role-based access globally. Each party's access is determined by their specific organizational context, ensuring that access permissions are tailored to local requirements while maintaining overall system consistency.
2Device complexity
If every party of an organization is able to access all the documents associated with the organization, then access control mechanism is simple, but it can be difficult for a given party to find a document of interest and all parties may not need to or should not be able to view all the documents
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments document accessibility by organizing documents into hierarchical groups corresponding to organizations and departments. Instead of presenting all documents to all parties, the system segments the document space so that each party sees only the documents relevant to their organization and department, improving retrieval efficiency without requiring complex access control logic.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary filtering of documents based on the party's organizational affiliation before presenting the document list to the user. This preliminary action of pre-filtering documents according to access rights eliminates the need for users to search through irrelevant documents, improving productivity while keeping the access control mechanism relatively simple.
3Reliability
If access control rules are defined to restrict document access to specific organizations, then document security is improved, but the system becomes more complex and requires tracking of multiple access counters and hierarchical relationships
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces dynamic access counters that automatically update based on document version changes and access patterns. Rather than requiring static, pre-configured access rules for every scenario, the system dynamically adjusts access permissions based on the current state of the document and the party's relationship to the document, maintaining security while reducing the need for complex manual configuration.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where access decisions are continuously refined based on document version history and access counter values. The access control system receives feedback from document modification events and automatically adjusts permissions, reducing the need for complex manual rule management while maintaining high security standards.
Data Source
AI summary
Access to documents by parties can be controlled as follows. First, access can be controlled in accordance with access counters associated with the parties, where the documents have one or more versions. Second, access can be controlled in accordance with access levels associated with the parties. The access level of each party is one of a first access level, a second access level, a third access level, or a fourth access level. The first, second, third, and fourth access levels are ordered from the first access level to the fourth access level such that the first access level provides a greatest degree of access to the documents and the fourth access level provides a least degree of access to the documents. Third, access can be controlled in accordance with placement of organizations within a hierarchy of organizations, where the parties are organized over the organizations.