Contexts and Context-Based Access Control

The increasing diffusion of portable devices and the widespread availability of wireless networks where users live, work and travel, together create opportunities for users to access resources anywhere, any time and from various access devices. Ubiquitous systems in charge of providing and controlling access to these resources require a precise conceptual model to define the user context and the resources she can reach in each context. We propose a UML model for contexts, unifying previous models which could become the core for a context-based access control framework representing security constraints in the form of classes and associations. A generic model such as this one can be used to develop new systems and evaluate existing systems. The model for the context part has value on its own and can be used independently.