Attribute based access control in DSpace

Authorization is an important security aspect that needs to be taken care of when access on sensitive resources has to be restricted. In Institutional Digital Repository Systems, controlled and protected access on digital content is ensured through flexible yet effective access control mechanisms. Repositories today store digital content of varying security levels and access on such content requires context and environment to be considered as well to make an access control decision. Fine grained authorization which elaborates context aware constraints is suitable for restricting access in such systems. Attribute based access control (ABAC) model relies on attributes as the basic unit of access and provides a fine grained level authorization. In this paper we improve the primitive authorization of DSpace Institutional Digital Repository System by incorporating Attribute based access control.