Proximity-Based Access Control

ABSTRACT: The focus of this effort is to develop a standards-based"proximity-based access control"(PBAC) mechanism that goes beyond (yet leverages) traditional Attribute/Role Based Access Control (ABAC/RBAC) approaches. We propose to develop an innovative, generic PBAC architecture, leveraging several reference technologies: (1) ObjectSecurity"s OpenPMF model-driven security policy automation technology, which allows the flexible authoring and management of human-understandable, generic policies in models and the automatic generation of the technical ABAC enforcement, and (2) OpenPMF"s ABAC features for fine-grained, contextual access enforcement across distributed, interconnected software applications, and (3) our TRL 9 standards-based RTI DDS data-centric publish-subscribe middleware as a flexible application platform to showcase our PBAC solution. By using a model-driven security approach integrated with the state-of-the art DDS middleware we can automate much of the PBAC policy management, and can produce novel, highly useful proximity attributes (e.g. business process centric proximity, data-distribution centric proximity etc.). RTI and Object Security are uniquely qualified to deliver and support this framework. RTI is the leading vendor of DDS middleware and has extensive experience with sensor fusion, defense networks, and supporting TRL 9 technology in mission-critical applications. ObjectSecurity has been the leading provider of model-driven security technologies for access control for over 10 years. BENEFIT: The benefits of a mature proximity-based access control capability will be significant -- both because it can expose information to those who might need it, and because it will keep whose without a need to know from accessing it. This measurably improves upon current approaches (attribute-based, and role-based) by adding much finer-grained information access control than exists today. Military, Intelligence Community, and Commercial Markets that focus on the dissemination of, and controlled access to, information will be able to leverage this technology.