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GUCON: A Generic Graph Pattern Based Policy Framework for Usage Control Enforcement

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Rules and Reasoning (RuleML+RR 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14244))

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Abstract

Robust Usage Control (UC) mechanisms are necessary to protect sensitive data and resources, especially when these are distributed across multiple nodes or users. Existing solutions have limitations in expressing and enforcing usage control policies due to difficulties in capturing complex requirements and the lack of formal semantics necessary for automated compliance checking. To address these challenges, we propose GUCON, a generic policy framework that allows for the expression of and reasoning over granular UC policies. This is achieved by leveraging the expressiveness and semantics of graph pattern expressions, as well as the flexibility of deontic concepts. Additionally, GUCON incorporates algorithms for conflict detection, resolution, compliance and requirements checking, ensuring active policy enforcement. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework by proposing instantiations using SHACL, OWL and ODRL. We show how instantiations provide a bridge between abstract formalism and concrete implementations, thus allowing existing reasoners and implementations to be leveraged.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Social Linked Data: https://solidproject.org/.

  2. 2.

    SHACL, https://www.w3.org/TR/shac.

  3. 3.

    OWL 2, https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-prim.

  4. 4.

    ODRL, https://www.w3.org/TR/odrl-model.

  5. 5.

    The functions invoked in the algorithms defined below are available here: https://github.com/Ines-Akaichi/GUCON-Instantiation/blob/main/GUCON-Appendix.pdf.

  6. 6.

    GitHub, https://github.com/Ines-Akaichi/GUCON-Instantiation.

  7. 7.

    The following prefixes are used throughout Sect. 6: rdf:<http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>; rdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>; owl:<http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>; foaf:<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>; ex:<http://example.org/>.

  8. 8.

    ODRL Formal Semantics, https://w3c.github.io/odrl/formal-semantics/.

  9. 9.

    TopBraid SHACL, https://github.com/TopQuadrant/shacl.

  10. 10.

    Trav-SHACL, https://github.com/SDM-TIB/Trav-SHACL.

  11. 11.

    https://book.validatingrdf.com/bookHtml011.html.

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Acknowledgements

This work is funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860801. Sabrina Kirrane is funded by the FWF Austrian Science Fund and the Internet Foundation Austria under the FWF Elise Richter and netidee SCIENCE programmes as project number V 759-N.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Systems and New Media, WU, Vienna, Austria

    Ines Akaichi & Sabrina Kirrane

  2. Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, Heraklion, Greece

    Giorgos Flouris & Irini Fundulaki

Authors
  1. Ines Akaichi
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  2. Giorgos Flouris
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  3. Irini Fundulaki
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  4. Sabrina Kirrane
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ines Akaichi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Anna Fensel

  2. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ana Ozaki

  3. SINTEF AS/Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Dumitru Roman

  4. Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Ahmet Soylu

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Akaichi, I., Flouris, G., Fundulaki, I., Kirrane, S. (2023). GUCON: A Generic Graph Pattern Based Policy Framework for Usage Control Enforcement. In: Fensel, A., Ozaki, A., Roman, D., Soylu, A. (eds) Rules and Reasoning. RuleML+RR 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14244. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45072-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45072-3_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-45071-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-45072-3

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