Policy conflict management using XACML

Different access control models are being used in multi-user environments based on application and organizational requirements. During lifetime of an application various access control policies are being created. Various policies may result into access conflicts since administrators and processes of an organizations tends to change frequently. Access Control Lists (ACL), a widely adopted access control mechanism is unable to handle access control conflicts. There is a need to have mechanism that automatically detect conflicts during policy generation and rectify them. We proposed policy conflict management solution using XACML. Proposed solution has been incorporated in OpenLDAP and proved to be useful to mediate access control conflicts that eventually results into reduction of access control based security vulnerabilities in the system.