A role administration system in role-based authorization infrastructures - Design and implementation

In this paper we describe a system whose purpose is to help establish a valid set of roles and role hierarchies with assigned users and associated permissions. We have designed and implemented the system, called RA system, which enables role administrators to build and configure various components of a role-based access control (RBAC) model, thereby making it possible to lay a foundation for role-based authorization infrastructures. Three methodological constituents for our purpose are introduced, together with the design and implementation issues. The system has a role-centric view for easily managing constrained roles as well as assigned users and permissions. An LDAP-accessible directory service was used for a role database. We show that the system can be seamlessly integrated with an existing privilege-based authorization infrastructure. We finally discuss our plans for future development of the system.