Dynamic Policy Model for Large Evolving Enterprises

The nature of an open distributed environment provides a resoundingly diverse yet potentially chaotic environment for users. A great deal of research has focused on the management of resources in such an environment and policy-based management has emerged as one such promising solution. In order to support large evolving enterprises we have developed a policy model that is scalable, able to cope with the extraordinarily high rate of change inherent in such environments and recognises the efficiencies to be gained from supporting trust within enterprise communities. To do this we have developed a number of novel concepts including, enterprise domain, policy space, policy authority, compound actions and defences which are unique and central to our approach. Furthermore, our model supports dynamic roles, dynamic policies and dynamic conflict analysis. Prevailing policy-based management models largely promote the static definition and analysis of policy. We argue that although these models are suitable for homogenous, largely static environments, they are too rigid to adequately represent large, heterogeneous, evolving enterprise as the fluidity and complexity of interactions occurring in such environments are genuinely difficult and often impossible to pre-empt at the time of policy specification and role assignment.