The compatibility of policies

ABSTRACT

The goal of this paper is to present a study of the compatibility of policies, security or other. Two policies are said to be compatible at a given system if the system behaviours satisfy the requirements of both policies. Incompatibility can be a result of the environment in which the system is intended to operate, or, of the actual behavioural requirements on the system and its components. We introduce a means of assessing the compatibility of policies, and the requirements for compatible policies, in a closed system model.

REFERENCES

• AL90: Martin Abadi, Leslie Lamport. Composing Specifications. Technical Report 66, Digital Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, California, October 1990.
• BeMa77: John L. Bell, Moshe Machover. A Course in Mathematical Logic. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science Publishers, B.V., 1977.
• BFGGO89: H. Barringer , M. Fisher , D. Gabbay , G. Gough , R. Owens, METATEM: a framework for programming in temporal logic, Proceedings on Stepwise refinement of distributed systems: models, formalisms, correctness, p.94-129, May 1990, Mook, The Netherlands
• Bib75: K.J. Biba. Integrity Considerations for Secure Computer Systems. Technical Report ESD-TR-76-372, MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA, July 1975.
• BLP75: D.E. Bell, L.J. LaPadula. Secure Computer System: Unified Exposition and Multics Interpretation. Technical Report MTR-2997, Tech. Rep., MITRE, Bedford, MA, July 1975.
• Hin93: Heather M. Hinton. An Environment- Based Approach to the Composition of Safe Systems. Master's thesis, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, January 1993.
• Hos92: Hilary H. Hosmer, The multipolicy paradigm for trusted systems, Proceedings on the 1992-1993 workshop on New security paradigms, p.19-32, August 1993, Little Compton, Rhode Island, United States [doi>10.1145/283751.283768]
• JT88: Dale M. Johnson, E. Javier Thayer. Security and the Composition of Machines. In Proceedings of the Computer Security Foundations Workshop, IEEE Computer Society Press, June 1988, pages 72-89.
• LBTS92: E.S. Lee, P.I.P. Boulton, B.W. Thomson, R.E. Soper. Composable Trusted Systems. Technical Report, Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1992, Final Report of Contract W2213-9- 6351/01-SZ. Available via anonymous ftp as CSRI272 from csri.toronto.edu.
• McC87: Daryl McCullough. Specifications for Multi-Level Security and a Hook-Up Property. In Proceedings of the 1987 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE Computer Society Press, May 1987, pages 161-166.
• McC88: Daryl McCullough. Noninterference and the Composability of Security Properties. In Proceedings of the 1988 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE Computer Society Press, May 1988, pages 177-186.
• MCHa69: J. McCarthy, P.J. Hayes. Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence. In Machine Intelligence: 4, Bernard Meltzer, Donald Michie, Eds. New York, New York: American Elsevier, 1969, pages 463-502.
• Nes93: John P. Nestor, "The Composition of Property-Preserving Event Systems," Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 1993.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.0 General

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.0 General

General Terms:
Theory