A Formal Comparison of the Bell & LaPadula and RBAC Models

In this paper we address the problem of comparing access control models. Indeed, many access control models can be found in the literature and in order to choose one model for a particular context, some tools helping such a choice are needed. We develop here a complete example allowing to compare (in a formal way) the Bell and LaPadula (BLP) model and the role-based (RBAC) model. In order to achieve this goal, we first express these models in a uniform way, then we introduce concepts (mostly based on simulations) allowing to compare access control models.