Implementing context and team based access control in healthcare intranets

The establishment of an efficient access control system in healthcare intranets is a critical security issue directly related to the protection of patients' privacy. Our C-TMAC (Context and Team-based Access Control) model is an active security access control model that layers dynamic access control concepts on top of RBAC (Role-based) and TMAC (Team-based) access control models. It also extends them in the sense that contextual information concerning collaborative activities is associated with teams of users and user permissions are dynamically filtered during runtime. These features of C-TMAC meet the specific security requirements of healthcare applications. In this paper, an experimental implementation of the C-TMAC model is described. More specifically, we present the operational architecture of the system that is used to implement C-TMAC security components in a healthcare intranet. Based on the technological platform of an Oracle Data Base Management System and Application Server, the application logic is coded with stored PL/SQL procedures that include Dynamic SQL routines for runtime value binding purposes. The resulting active security system adapts to current need-to-know requirements of users during runtime and provides fine-grained permission granularity. Apart from identity certificates for authentication, it uses attribute certificates for communicating critical security metadata, such as role membership and team participation of users.