An RBAC-based PIB for Provisioning Access Control

Abstract. This paper presents a framework for representing and distributing access control policies in distributed heterogeneous systems. Access control polices follows the RBAC (Role Based Access Control) model proposed by the NIST. The framework is based on the provisioning strategy defined by IETF, i.e., the RBAC information is represented in terms of a PIB (Policy Information Base) and distributed to the enforcement elements using the COPS-PR protocol. This approach can be explored in several scenarios for configuring both network devices and RBAC-aware applications. A research prototype has been implemented, and the results obtained from a performance analysis of the proposed extensions are summarized and evaluated. 1