Hierarchical Policy-Based Access Control for Shared Resources
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Solution Overview
Problem
In large-scale computing systems, propagating access control policies down to lower levels of a hierarchy is computationally expensive and can lead to race conditions and unstable states, especially when multiple users simultaneously access shared resources.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a hierarchical policy-based access control system where access control policies are stored only with the shared resource, and user authorization is determined on-demand by gathering policies from higher hierarchy levels, creating an effective access control list for each resource request.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If access control policies are propagated down to each lower-level resource in the hierarchy, then access control is comprehensive and secure, but computational cost increases and race conditions occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the access control policy management into two distinct parts: (1) policy definition at the shared resource level, and (2) on-demand effective access control list generation at the lower-level resource level. This segmentation allows policies to be defined once at the parent resource without propagating them to all children, reducing computational overhead while maintaining security through dynamic effective access control list creation when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary action by storing and maintaining access control policies at the shared resource level in advance. When a lower-level resource is accessed, the system retrieves these pre-stored policies and combines them with resource-specific policies to generate the effective access control list, avoiding the need to propagate policies beforehand to all lower levels.
2Stability of the object's composition
If access control policies are propagated to all lower-level resources, then access control is consistent across the hierarchy, but race conditions and unstable states occur during simultaneous updates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic approach where the effective access control list is generated on-demand at the time of resource access rather than being statically propagated. This dynamic generation combines the shared resource's access control policy with the lower-level resource's policy, ensuring consistency without the race conditions that arise from simultaneous propagation updates across multiple resources.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism (the effective access control list generation process) that mediates between the shared resource's access control policy and the lower-level resource's policy. This intermediary dynamically combines the two policies when access is requested, ensuring consistent access control without directly propagating policies through the hierarchy, thereby avoiding race conditions.
Data Source
AI summary
Access control for shared computing resources in a hierarchical system is provided herein. An as-needed, “lazy evaluation” approach to access control is described in which an effective access control list for a computing resource is determined after a request is received from a user to access the resource. When resources are shared, access control policies are created and stored in association with the shared resource but are not stored in association with hierarchically related lower-level resources. When an access request for a resource is received, access control policies are collected for levels of a computing resource hierarchy that are higher than the hierarchy level of the resource. An effective access control list is determined based on permissions specified in the collected access control policies. The effective access control list represents an effective propagation of access control policies of higher hierarchy levels to the computing resource.