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The Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) promotes the U.S. economy and public welfare by providing technical leadership for the Nation's measurement and standards infrastructure. ITL develops tests, test methods, reference data, proof of concept implementations, and technical analyses to advance the development and productive use of information technology. ITL's responsibilities include the development of technical, physical, administrative, and management standards and guidelines for the cost-effective security and privacy of sensitive unclassified information in federal computer systems. This Interagency Report discusses ITL's research, guidance, and outreach efforts in computer security, and its collaborative activities with industry, government, and academic organizations. National Institute of Standards and Technology Interagency Report 7316, 60 pages (September 2006)Certain commercial entities, equipment, or materials may be identified in this document in order to describe an experimental procedure or concept adequately. Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that the entities, materials, or equipment are necessarily the best available for the purpose.iii NISTIR 7316Assessment of Access Control Systems AbstractAdequate security of information and information systems is a fundamental management responsibility. Nearly all applications that deal with financial, privacy, safety, or defense include some form of access control. Access control is concerned with determining the allowed activities of legitimate users, mediating every attempt by a user to access a resource in the system. In some systems, complete access is granted after successful authentication of the user, but most systems require more sophisticated and complex control. In addition to the authentication mechanism (such as a password), access control is concerned with how authorizations are structured. In some cases, authorization may mirror the structure of the organization, while in others it may be based on the sensitivity level of various documents and the clearance level of the user accessing those documents. This publication explains some of the commonly used access control services available in information technology systems.Organizations planning to implement an access control system should consider three abstractions: access control policies, models, and mechanisms. Access control policies are highlevel requirements that specify how access is managed and who may access information under what circumstances. For instance, policies may pertain to resource usage within or across organizational units or may be based on need-to-know, competence, authority, obligation, or conflict-of-interest factors. At a high level, access control policies are enforced through a mechanism that translates a user's access request, often in terms of a structure that a system provides....

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Intermediate CA A CA that is subordinate to another CA, and has a CA subordinate to itself. Key Escrow A deposit of the private key of a subscriber and other pertinent information pursuant to an escrow agreement or similar contract binding upon the subscriber, the terms of which require one or more agents to hold the subscriber's private key for the benefit of the subscriber, an employer, or other party, upon provisions set forth in the agreement. [adapted from ABADSG, "Commercial key escrow service"] Key Exchange The process of exchanging public keys in order to establish secure communications. Key Generation Material Random numbers, pseudo-random numbers, and cryptographic parameters used in generating cryptographic keys. Key Pair Two mathematically related keys having the properties that (1) one key can be used to encrypt a message that can only be decrypted using the other key, and (ii) even knowing one key, it is computationally infeasible to discover the other key. Local Registration Authority (LRA) A Registration Authority with responsibility for a local community. Memorandum Agreement between the Federal PKI Policy Authority and an Agency allowing Private Key (1) The key of a signature key pair used to create a digital signature. (2) The key of an encryption key pair that is used to decrypt confidential information. In both cases, this key must be kept secret.

The Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) promotes the U.S. economy and public welfare by providing technical leadership for the Nation's measurement and standards infrastructure. ITL develops tests, test methods, reference data, proof of concept implementations, and technical analyses to advance the development and productive use of information technology. ITL's responsibilities include the development of management, administrative, technical, and physical standards and guidelines for the cost-effective security and privacy of other than national security-related information in Federal information systems.iv Authority This publication has been developed by NIST to further its statutory responsibilities under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Public Law (P.L.) 107-347. NIST is responsible for developing information security standards and guidelines, including minimum requirements for Federal information systems, but such standards and guidelines shall not apply to national security systems without the express approval of appropriate Federal officials exercising policy authority over such systems. This guideline is consistent with the requirements of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, Section 8b (3) Certain commercial entities, equipment, or materials may be identified in this document in order to describe an experimental procedure or concept adequately. Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by NIST, nor is it intended to imply that the entities, materials, or equipment are necessarily the best available for the purpose.There may be references in this publication to other publications currently under development by NIST in accordance with its assigned statutory responsibilities. The information in this publication, including concepts and methodologies, may be used by Federal agencies even before the completion of such companion publications. Thus, until each publication is completed, current requirements, guidelines, and procedures, where they exist, remain operative. For planning and transition purposes, Federal agencies may wish to closely follow the development of these new publications by NIST.Organizations are encouraged to review all draft publications during public comment periods and provide feedback to NIST. All NIST publications, other than the ones noted above, are available at http://csrc.nist.gov/publications. AbstractNearly all applications include some form of access control (AC). AC is concerned with determining the allowed activities of legitimate users, mediating every attempt by a user to access a resource in the system. AC systems come with a wide variety of features and administrative capabilities, and their operational impact can be significant. In particular, this impact can pertain to administrative and user productivity, as well as to the organization's ability to perform its mission. Therefore, it is reasonable to use quality metrics to verify...

Mandatory access control (MAC) mechanisms control which users or processes have access to which resources in a system. MAC policies are increasingly specified to facilitate managing and maintaining access control. However, the correct specification of the policies is a very challenging problem. To formally and precisely capture the security properties that MAC should adhere to, MAC models are usually written to bridge the rather wide gap in abstraction between policies and mechanisms. In this paper, we propose a general approach for property verification for MAC models. The approach defines a standardized structure for MAC models, providing for both property verification and automated generation of test cases. The approach expresses MAC models in the specification language of a model checker and expresses generic access control properties in the property language. Then the approach uses the model checker to verify the integrity, coverage, and confinement of these properties for the MAC models and finally generates test cases via combinatorial covering array for the system implementations of the models.

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