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'R-What?' Development of a role-based access control policy-writing tool for e-Scientists

Brostoff, Sacha, Sasse, M. Angela, Chadwick, David W., Cunningham, James, Mbanaso, Uche, Otenko, Sassa (2005) 'R-What?' Development of a role-based access control policy-writing tool for e-Scientists. Software: Practice and Experience, 35 (9). pp. 835-856. ISSN 0038-0644. (doi:10.1002/spe.691) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:14303)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/spe.691

Abstract

A lightweight role-based access control policy authoring tool was developed for e- Scientists, a community where access policies have to be implemented for an increasingly heterogeneous group of local and remote users. Two fundamental problems were identified (1) lack of understanding what the policy components are (i.e. how authorization policies are structured), and (2) lack of understanding of the underlying policy paradigm (i.e. what should go into the policy, and what should be left out). Conceptual design (CD) techniques were used to revise the user interface (UI) labels so that e-Scientists and developers were better able to describe access policy components from labels, and match labels with components (t=6.28, df=7, p=.000 two tailed). CD, instructional text, bubble help, UI behaviour and alert boxes were used to shape users? models of the policy paradigm. The final prototype improved users? efficiency and effectiveness by: more than doubling the speed with which expert users could write authorization policies; and facilitating users without specialist security knowledge to overcome the policy paradigm and components problems, enabling them to complete 80% of basic and 75% of advanced authorization policy writing tasks in a usability trial.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1002/spe.691
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: David Chadwick
Date Deposited: 24 Nov 2008 18:03 UTC
Last Modified: 05 Nov 2024 09:48 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/14303 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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