An Application of Security Access and Control to Semantic Metadata Management

It is envisioned that future architectures will maximize the use of Semantic Technologies and information sharing to improve efficiency and automation, support multi-source information aggregation for advanced analysis, eliminate needless data duplication, and improve adaptability of data sources to new dissemination requirements. In this paper, the authors present a semantic-level solution for enforcing flexible, role-based access and editing policies in support of ontologies, as well as, the underlying data content. The authors describe an implementation method for a security policy with distinctive user roles. A repository of semantically-rich information is used to simultaneously permit access by users with differet security clearances and deny access to unauthorized users. Finally, in the context of a real world example, the authors demonstrate how the application of the security scheme seamlessly integrates with third party semantic applications and visualization tools.