Visualising Access Control: The PRISM Approach

Despite the usefulness of passive network monitoring for the operation, maintenance, control and protection of communication networks, as well as law enforcement, network monitoring activities are surrounded by serious privacy implications. In this paper, a software tool for the management of privacy-preserving authorisation and access control to data originating from passive network monitoring is described. It offers a user-friendly, visual interface for the specification of the underlying concepts, such as roles, data types, actions, rules and contextual information, providing the appropriate level of abstraction. Based on the specified model, the proposed application generates the cryptographic means for the dissemination of the provisions to the enforcing entities, while relying on an ontological model for the representation of the access control policies.