A lattice-based approach for updating access control policies in real-time

Real-time update of access control policies, that is, updating policies while they are in effect and enforcing the changes immediately and automatically, is necessary for many dynamic environments. Examples of such environments include disaster relief and war zone. In such situations, system resources may need re-configuration or operational modes may change, necessitating a change of policies. For the system to continue functioning, the policies must be changed immediately and the modified policies automatically enforced. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem—we consider real-time update of access control policies in the context of a database system.