Cryptographic access control in support of Object Level Protection

This paper presents the results of a high-level investigation into the application of cryptographic access control in support of Object Level Protection (OLP). The investigation focused on the concept of attribute-based encryption (ABE) applied to an architecture in which OLP is realized through Content-based Protection and Release (CPR). The choice of ABE is motivated by a natural correspondence that exists between ABE and CPR. We explain this correspondence and present a detailed step-by-step description of how the concept of ABE can be applied to a number of basic use cases for information sharing in a CPR-enabled environment. The paper assumes an appropriate ABE scheme and does not contain details on cryptographic operations.