Policy Management of Enterprise Systems: A Requirements Study Tim Finin, Yelena Yesha Kelly Lyons, Jen Hawkins, Stephen Perelgut Pranam Kolari 2006 IEEE Workshop on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks 7 June

State of the Art, Motivation Policy 2005 –Security, Trust, Privacy, Policy-based Management –Network management, Pervasive Computing, Multi-agent coordination Policy 2006 –Similar themes this year –Scope of policy management –Panel on Singleton Policies

The Problem Policy Management of an Enterprise Web Application –Identify Policy Decision/Influence Points –Domain specific requirement characteristics –Applicability of existing research/tools An application case-study –Elicit requirements from users GOAL: Abstract out policy management requirements for a new class of applications

CASSIS Used by IBM Centers for Advanced Studies (CAS), a university facing department Artifact, The Project Proposal Actors and their Roles –CAS Research Staff Members (CRSM) initiate proposal from Professors –Professors/Researchers submit proposal/s –CRSM assigns Reviewers and Evaluators to proposal –CAS Head approves proposal –CRSM and CAS Head monitor project Workflow - Actors interact with the Artifact

Management Requirements Tuning and adaptability –Address rotational management Accountability –To Proposal submitters –To higher level management –Comply to organizational and regional statutory requirements Along two axes –Privacy –Business

CASSIS Privacy Policies (1) (i) Java Server Page (JSP) templates common to all roles (ii) Field specific decisions hidden in implementation

CASSIS Privacy Policies (2) Role Based Access Control –E.g. Evaluators have access to all reviews, but not to other evaluations Adaptability –Policy Management Autonomic Computing (PMAC) toolkit –Autonomic Computing Policy Language (ACPL) –Rules hidden in “java” code were now made explicit Accountability –To users, translation to P3P vocabulary –To the enterprise, organization specific vocabulary

CASSIS Business Policies (1) Directly influences actions in current state –E.g. CAS RSM – When choosing reviewers, reviewer location and their IBM department are important Influences future actions incrementally –E.g. CAS Head – Past collaboration with IBM could potentially improve proposal merit

Business Policies (2) Event triggering for policy guidance –Screens used by the role players to work on the artifact Conditions based on Knowledge Base (KB) –IBM Intranet, e.g. Employee databases available within IBM, access APIs available (SOA vision), trustworthy –Web KB, e.g. publication databases available on the Web, XML data dumps, not trustworthy –(Intranet+Web) KB, not trustworthy Result of Policies –Act as guidelines (recommendations) to role-players

Business Policies (3) Traditional Business Policies –Actions directly executed by machines –Typically ECA, Event Condition Action –Trustworthy underlying knowledge base (KB) –Application area -- resource management –Policies are actionable How are CASSIS Policies different? –Actions filtered by humans –Policy results influence actions, guidelines –Underlying KB not necessarily trustworthy –Potentially large KB

In the Workflow Context WWW Justification/Accountability 4 4 Policy Decision Point 1 1 SPARQL Knowledge Base Auditability Justification Users Management 3 3

Workflow Context - Example Policy: CAS Head – Past collaboration with IBM could potentially improve proposal merit SPARQL on KB used by Policy Rule SPARQL Policy Rule

Workflow Context - Example PREFIX ibm PREFIX citeseer PREFIX cas ASK { ibm: ? . ?y citeseer:coauthor ?x. ?y cas:author } PREFIX ibm PREFIX citeseer PREFIX cas CONSTRUCT { ?x ibm: ? . ?y citeseer:coauthor ?x. ?y cas:author } WHERE { ?x ibm: ? . ?y citeseer:coauthor ?x. ?y cas:author } ASK – Queries as Conditions CONSTRUCT – Query returns graph patterns, used to display to the user during on a policy recommendation and for later auditing

Continuing Work ECR[J] - Event Condition Recommendation [Justification] The exact nature of modeling “Recommendation” Policy Language Overlaying SPARQL Details of Justification Repository Elicit explicit policy rules from enterprise management

Conclusions Enterprise Web Applications amenable to privacy policy enablement Interoperability across policy vocabularies continues to be a bottleneck Business Policy Enablement raises interesting future challenges –Underlying Knowledge Base –Policies or Guidance? –Auditing/Accountability –Iterative Refinement of Business Policies

Questions?