Privileged Access Control for Dynamic Content Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing content management systems lack the ability to dynamically manage access rights for users and groups, often requiring static membership in access control lists, which limits flexibility in granting higher access levels only in specific contexts.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system where privileged application code can dynamically adjust user access levels within a content management system, allowing users to perform specific actions in certain contexts by moving their session to a higher access level and restricting them to only necessary actions, and reverting back to their original access level once the purpose is fulfilled.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If static group membership is used to control access, then access control is simple to implement, but it cannot provide context-specific access levels for different tasks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic access control by allowing group memberships to be determined at runtime based on contextual conditions rather than being statically defined. The system evaluates conditions such as user identity, content properties, and task requirements to dynamically determine which groups a user belongs to for access control purposes, enabling context-specific access levels without requiring a completely complex redesign of the access control mechanism.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of group membership from a static, pre-defined state to a dynamic, runtime-determined state. By allowing group memberships to be evaluated based on varying conditions (user, content, task context), the system adapts access control behavior to different contexts while maintaining the underlying static ACL structure, thus resolving the contradiction between adaptability and complexity.
2Ease of operation
If higher access levels are granted to users for specific tasks, then task completion is enabled, but access security is compromised for other contexts
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by granting higher access levels selectively for specific tasks and contexts rather than globally to users. The system determines group memberships locally based on the particular task context, user identity, and content properties, allowing users to have different effective access levels for different tasks while maintaining security for other contexts. This enables task execution capability without compromising overall access security.
3Adaptability or versatility
If static access control lists are used, then system performance is efficient, but flexibility to adapt to different task requirements is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by pre-defining groups and their associated access rights in advance, while leaving the specific group membership determination to be resolved at runtime based on context. This allows the system to maintain efficient access control list structures while adding flexibility through conditional group membership evaluation, balancing adaptability with performance by preparing access control structures beforehand without over-complicating runtime operations.
Data Source
AI summary
Privileged access to managed content is disclosed. In some embodiments, a privileged portion of application code manages user access to managed content at a level of access greater than the user would otherwise be afforded. The privileged code moves a content management session up or down in levels of access as required to allow a user to perform through the application one or more specific actions it is desired to permit the user to do in a particular context (e.g., at a particular time in the lifecycle of an item of content and/or a particular point in a business process or work flow), including to permit the user to perform an action it is not desired to let the user perform in other contexts, such as write a particular value to a content item it is not desired to allow the user to write to otherwise.