A context-sensitive dynamic role-based access control model for pervasive computing environments

Resources and services are accessible in pervasive computing environments from anywhere and at any time. Also, due to ever-changing nature of such environments, the identity of users is unknown. However, users must be able to access the required resources based on their contexts. These and other similar complexities necessitate dynamic and context-aware access control models for such environments. In other words, an efficient access control model for pervasive computing environments should be aware of context information. Changes in context information imply some changes in the users' authorities. Accordingly, an access control model for a pervasive computing environment should control all accesses of unknown users to the resources based upon the participating context information, i.e., contexts of the users, resources and the environment. In this paper, a new context-aware access control model is proposed for pervasive computing environments. Contexts are classified into long-term contexts (which do not change during a session) and short-term contexts (which their steady-state period is less than an average time of a session). The model assigns roles to a user dynamically at the beginning of their sessions considering the long-term contexts. However, during a session the active permission set of the assigned roles are determined based on the short-term context conditions. Formal specification of the proposed model as well as the proposed architecture are presented in this paper. Furthermore, by presenting a real case study, it is shown that the model is applicable, decidable, and dynamic. Expressiveness and complexity of the model is also evaluated.