Abstract
Policy-based software architectures are nowadays widely exploited to regulate different aspects of systems’ behavior, such as access control, resource usage, and adaptation. Several languages and technologies have been proposed as, e.g., the standard XACML. However, developing real-world systems using such approaches is still a tricky task, being them complex and error-prone. To overcome such difficulties, we advocate the use of FACPL, a formal policy language inspired to but simpler than XACML. FACPL has an intuitive syntax, a mathematical semantics and easy-to-use software tools supporting policy development and enforcement. We illustrate potentialities and effectiveness of our approach through a case study from the Cloud computing domain.
This work has been partially sponsored by the EU project ASCENS (257414) and by the Italian MIUR project CINA, PRIN 2010–2011.
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Notes
- 1.
The algorithm deny-biased states: if the decision is permit and all obligations are successfully discharged, then the PEP grants access, otherwise it forbids access.
- 2.
The algorithm permit-overrides states: if any policy among the considered ones evaluates to permit, then the decision is permit; otherwise, if all policies are found to be not-applicable, then the decision is not-applicable; in the remaining cases, the decision is deny or indeterminate according to specific error situations (see [7]).
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Appendix
Appendix
We report in this appendix the complete FACPL policies in force in the Cloud IaaS scenario. Specifically, the policies in Listing 1.1 aim at concentrating the workload on hypervisor HYPER_1, considered as the primary hypervisor, and using hypervisor HYPER_2 only when the other is fully loaded. A rationale underlying this policy can be, e.g., to save energy by keeping the secondary hypervisor in stand-by mode until its use becomes necessary. The policies in Listing 1.2, instead, aim at balancing the workload between the two hypervisors.
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Margheri, A., Masi, M., Pugliese, R., Tiezzi, F. (2014). Developing and Enforcing Policies for Access Control, Resource Usage, and Adaptation. In: Tuosto, E., Ouyang, C. (eds) Web Services and Formal Methods. WS-FM 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8379. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08260-8_6
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