Policy-Based Access Control for Context-Aware Services over the Wireless Internet

Abstract

The spreading wireless accessibility to the Internet stimulates the provisioning of mobile commercial services to a wide set of heterogeneous and limited client terminals. This requires novel programming methodologies to support and simplify the development of innovative service classes. In these novel services, results and offered quality levels should depend on both client location and locally available resources (context). In addition, it is crucial to manage the frequent modifications of resource availability due to wireless client movements during service provisioning. Within this perspective, the chapter motivates the need for novel access control solutions to flexibly control the resource access of mobile clients depending on the currently applicable context. In particular, it discusses and exemplifies how innovative middleware for access control should support the determination of the client context on the basis of high-level declarative directives (profiles and policies) and distributed online monitoring.