Automated Privacy Enforcement via Role-Based Access Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing data security systems fail to effectively enforce access control to sensitive customer data in data warehouses, leading to potential privacy breaches and non-compliance with regulations, as they lack a robust mechanism to grant access on a 'need-to-know' basis while maintaining data security.
Innovation Solution
A data security system that assigns business purposes to employees, evaluates data elements, and determines access levels based on these purposes, allowing access only when the employee's role matches the required access level, with optional customer consent, and includes a look-up table to manage access values for various data elements and users.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If access to data warehouse is restricted to very limited individuals, then data security is improved, but data accessibility and utility are worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments access control by creating distinct roles (data steward, data consumer, application) and assigning specific permissions to each role. This allows different levels of access control at granular levels (data element, data set, data warehouse), enabling security to be maintained while providing appropriate access to different user groups based on their business purposes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements local quality by allowing different access permissions for different data elements within the same data warehouse. Access control is applied locally at the data element level rather than uniformly across all data, enabling specific data elements to be accessible to certain roles while remaining restricted to others, thus balancing security with accessibility.
2Reliability
If access control mechanisms are implemented on a need-to-know basis, then privacy protection is improved, but system complexity is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-defining roles and their associated permissions before actual data access occurs. Business purposes are assigned to roles in advance, and data elements are tagged with access requirements beforehand. This pre-configuration simplifies the access control process during runtime, as the system automatically matches user roles with data requirements without complex real-time evaluations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer (roles and business purposes) between users and data elements. Instead of directly managing complex access permissions for each user-data pair, the system uses roles as intermediaries that encapsulate access rules. This intermediary abstraction simplifies the overall system complexity by reducing the number of direct access control decisions needed.
3Measurement precision
If data elements are evaluated for access levels, then access control precision is improved, but processing time is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent reduces processing time by performing preliminary evaluation and tagging of data elements with their access requirements before access requests are made. Business purposes and access levels are pre-assigned to data elements, so when an access request occurs, the system only needs to match the user's role with the pre-defined requirements rather than evaluating all data elements from scratch.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of access control from dynamic evaluation to static pre-assignment. By converting access control decisions into pre-defined parameters (roles, business purposes, access levels) that are assigned beforehand, the system transforms a complex runtime evaluation process into a simpler parameter-matching operation, significantly reducing processing time while maintaining precision.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method of protecting the privacy of data is presented. The system and method may include receiving data from a data warehouse and determining an access level for each data element received. The access value may be based on the assigned business purpose of the user attempting to access the data. If a user with an assigned business purpose is authorized to access the data then access will be given, if not, access to the data will be denied. In some examples, the requesting user may request to override the security settings in order to obtain access to the data.