New Technical Paper on Role Mining

A new Technical Paper, “Leveraging Lattices to Improve Role Mining”, has been recently accepted and will be presented at the coming SEC 2008 23rd International Information Security Conference, co-located with IFIP World Computer Congress 2008, Milan, Italy, September 8-10, 2008.
Topics of interest of this conference include, but are not limited to:

• Access control
• Security and Content Policies
• Role Mining
• Security Compliance
• Identity and Trust Management

The paper highlights some crucial aspects on which Engiweb Security “IDEAS Role Constructor” module is based.

Abstract:
“In this paper we provide a new formal framework applicable to Role Mining algorithms.
This framework is based on a rigorous analysis of identifiable patterns in access permission data. In particular, it is possible to derive a lattice of candidate roles from the permission powerset.
We formally prove some interesting properties about such lattices. These properties, a contribution on their own, can be applied practically to optimize role mining algorithms. Data redundancies associated with co-occurrences of permissions among users can be easily identified and eliminated, allowing for increased output quality and reduced processing time.
To prove the effectiveness of our proposal, we have applied our results to two existing role mining algorithms: Apriori and RBAM. Application of these modified algorithms to a realistic data set consistently reduced running time and, in some cases, also greatly improved output quality; all of which confirmed our analytical findings.”
Authors: Alessandro Colantonio, Roberto Di Pietro, Alberto Ocello

Nice, Friends!, But, pardon me if I find much more pleasant another kind of Lattice: A nice piece of the Rhubarb-Strawberry Lattice Tart really hits the spot!

BTW if you are interested in receiving the full text, please send me an e-mail: my surname at eng dot it.