Integrating social identity theory in access control

Real world identities are multifaceted. Besides the traditional form of identities, a person can gain access through the membership of a social group or relationship to other known individuals. Social identity theories support relationship as being identity of individuals. This paper goes beyond the boundaries of the technical research, identifies the relevant findings of the social science research and incorporates them in an access control model to provide constrained access to the contents and services. In this regard semantic technologies are exploited to represent the access control model. The paper provides a thorough evaluation of the proposed model comparing with the prominent access control models.