ABSTRACT
In distributed-computing environments, applications or users have to share resources and communicate with each other to perform their jobs more efficiently. With the increase of the shared information and resources in the distributed system and for better performance, it is important to keep resources and the information integrity from the unexpected use by unauthorized user. Unauthorized access to the information by illegal users leads to the leakage of the data also increases. To protect the information in a distributed computing environment, it is necessary to secure the data through the user authentication and access control policy. This kind of policy has to be offered transparently to users or application programs for the convenient use of the system.
In the field of access control, delegation is an important aspect that is considered as a part of the administration mechanism. Thus, a complete access control must provide a flexible administration model to manage delegation. The basic idea behind delegation is that some active entity in a system delegates authority to another active entity to carry out some functions on behalf of the former. Delegation in computer systems can take many forms: human to human, human to machine, machine to machine, and perhaps even machine to human. Here the focus is on the human to human form of delegation of tasks using Role Based Access Control (RBAC).
Keywords: Role based access control, Access control, Delegation, Workflow.
