Towards a security framework for a WS-HumanTask processor

BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask (WS-HT) specify models to integrate human resources into business processes. The emerging use of these standards will result in more challenging authorization decisions in the context of the execution of workflows. Compared to a classical scenario where a workflow management system controls the mapping of tasks to a specific set of resources, human interaction introduces an additional mapping scheme in which humans were separately mapped to tasks. Basically the authorization framework needs to be adapted from a push-based model to a push-/pull-based approach. This short paper introduces the concepts of a security framework for a WS-HT implementation. It presents a generic framework that supports a pull-based work distribution strategy in distributed environments with the help of a task repository that mediates tasks between resources and workflow instances.