9
Access Control Systems for Geospatial Data
and Applications
Maria Luisa Damiani
1,3 and Elisa Bertino
2
1 University of Milan, Milan (Italy)
2 Purdue University, West Lafayette (USA)
3 EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland)
9.1 Introduction
Data security is today an important requirement in various applications because of
the stringent need to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. Comprehensive solutions to data security are quite complicated and require the
integration of different tools and techniques as well as specific organizational processes. In such a context, a fundamental role is played by the access control system
(ACS) that establishes which subjects are authorized to perform which operations
on which objects. Subjects are individuals or programs or other entities requiring
access to the protected resources. When dealing with protection of information, the
resources of interest are typically objects that record information, such as files in
an operating system, tuples in a relational database, or a complex object in an object database. Because of its relevance in the context of solutions for information
security, access control has been extensively investigated for database management
systems (DBMSs) [6], digital libraries [3, 14], and multimedia applications [24].
Yet, the importance of the spatial dimension in access control has been highlighted
only recently. We say that access control has a spatial dimension when the authorization to access a resource depends on position information. We broadly categorize
spatially aware access control as object-driven, subject-driven, and hybrid based on
whether the position information concerns objects, subjects, or both, respectively. In
the former case, the spatial dimension is introduced because of the spatial nature of
resources. For example, if the resources are georeferenced Earth images, then we can
envisage an individual be allowed to only display images covering a certain region.
The spatial dimension may also be required because of the spatial nature of subjects.
This is the case of mobile individuals allowed to access a resource when located in a
given area. For example, an individual may be authorized to view secret information
only within a military base. Finally, position information may concern both objects
and subjects like in the case of an individual authorized to display images of a region
only within a military office.
There is a wide range of applications which motivate spatially aware access
control. The two challenging and contrasting applications we propose as examples
Access Control Systems for Geospatial Data
and Applications
Maria Luisa Damiani
1,3 and Elisa Bertino
2
1 University of Milan, Milan (Italy)
2 Purdue University, West Lafayette (USA)
3 EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland)
9.1 Introduction
Data security is today an important requirement in various applications because of
the stringent need to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. Comprehensive solutions to data security are quite complicated and require the
integration of different tools and techniques as well as specific organizational processes. In such a context, a fundamental role is played by the access control system
(ACS) that establishes which subjects are authorized to perform which operations
on which objects. Subjects are individuals or programs or other entities requiring
access to the protected resources. When dealing with protection of information, the
resources of interest are typically objects that record information, such as files in
an operating system, tuples in a relational database, or a complex object in an object database. Because of its relevance in the context of solutions for information
security, access control has been extensively investigated for database management
systems (DBMSs) [6], digital libraries [3, 14], and multimedia applications [24].
Yet, the importance of the spatial dimension in access control has been highlighted
only recently. We say that access control has a spatial dimension when the authorization to access a resource depends on position information. We broadly categorize
spatially aware access control as object-driven, subject-driven, and hybrid based on
whether the position information concerns objects, subjects, or both, respectively. In
the former case, the spatial dimension is introduced because of the spatial nature of
resources. For example, if the resources are georeferenced Earth images, then we can
envisage an individual be allowed to only display images covering a certain region.
The spatial dimension may also be required because of the spatial nature of subjects.
This is the case of mobile individuals allowed to access a resource when located in a
given area. For example, an individual may be authorized to view secret information
only within a military base. Finally, position information may concern both objects
and subjects like in the case of an individual authorized to display images of a region
only within a military office.
There is a wide range of applications which motivate spatially aware access
control. The two challenging and contrasting applications we propose as examples