Team automata for spatial access control

Abstract

Team automata provide a framework for capturing notions like coordination, collaboration, and cooperation in distributed systems. They consist of an abstract specification of components of a system and allow one to desribe different interconnection mechanisms based upon the concept of "shared actions". This document considers access control mechanisms in the context of the team automata model. It demonstrates the model usage and utility for capturing information security and protection structures, and critical coordinations between these structures. On the basis of a spatial access metaphor, varous known access control strategies are given a rigorous formal description in terms of synchronizations in a team automata.