Access Control for Distributed Processing Systems: Use Cases and General Considerations

Access control (AC) is critical for preventing sensitive information from unauthorized access. Various AC systems have been proposed and enforced in different types of information systems (e.g., bank and military). However, existing AC systems cannot thoroughly address the challenges in emerging distributed processing systems (DPS), such as Big Data (BD) and Cloud, due to their dynamic and complex architecture. Generally, AC for DPS needs to consider the protection for collaboration among distributed processing domains. Even though some DPS architectures were proposed to address DPS challenges, most of them only focus on processing capabilities without consideration of AC. Even with some inclusion of security in recent DPS, they are mostly ad hoc and patch efforts. In this paper, we analyze the general features and use cases of BD and Cloud, which are two of most widely applied DPS applications, and propose a set of general and comprehensive considerations for AC in DPS, which can provide a guideline for designing AC systems for DPS.