Fine-Grained Privacy Enforcement via Intermediate Representation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current access control systems face scalability issues when enforcing complex and fine-grained data access policies across multiple data items, leading to high latency due to the need for independent access control decisions for each data item, particularly in compliance with regulations like GDPR.
Innovation Solution
The approach separates policy decision logic into a pre-computation phase and a runtime phase, generating an intermediate representation of policies and data attributes, which is then compiled and executed efficiently during the enforcement phase, allowing for scalable fine-grained access control by evaluating and rewriting access requests based on integrated policies and attributes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If independent access control decisions are made for each data item to enforce fine-grained policies, then policy enforcement precision is improved, but processing time and latency increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs pre-computation of access control decisions during an offline phase, generating intermediate representations and evaluating policy conditions before runtime. This preliminary action stores pre-evaluated policy data structures that can be quickly applied during online access requests, eliminating the need for complex real-time policy evaluation for each data item while maintaining fine-grained enforcement precision.
2Reliability
If complex data approval processes are implemented to comply with GDPR regulations, then policy compliance is improved, but scalability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The access control system segments the complex policy evaluation process into distinct phases: an offline pre-computation phase that handles complex policy analysis and generates intermediate representations, and an online enforcement phase that applies pre-computed decisions. This segmentation allows the system to maintain comprehensive GDPR compliance while achieving scalable performance by moving computational burden from runtime to pre-processing time.
3Manufacturing precision
If each data item requires independent access control evaluation, then fine-grained control is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates intermediate representations as simplified copies of the original complex policies during offline pre-computation. These intermediate representations capture the essential access control logic in a streamlined format that can be efficiently applied at runtime without requiring the full complexity of the original policy evaluation machinery, thus maintaining fine-grained control while reducing runtime system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments of the present systems and methods may provide a data access approval process that supports complex and fine-grained policies and can be applied to different data items at scale, which provides improvement over current technologies. For example, in an embodiment, a computer-implemented method for controlling access to data by computer systems may comprise generating an intermediate representation by integrating a combination of data access policies, data attributes including attributes per data subject, and the data itself to form the intermediate representation, receiving a request for access to the data, rewriting the request for access to the data to incorporate the intermediate representation so as to provide access only to data allowed by the policies integrated into the intermediate representation, and executing the rewritten request and providing only data allowed by the policies integrated into the intermediate representation.