Role and task based authorization management for process-view

Role-based authorizations for assigning tasks of workflows to roles/users are crucial to security management in workflow management systems. The authorizations must enforce separation of duty (SoD) constraints to prevent fraud and errors. This work discusses the authorization management of organizational roles in a process-view. A process-view, an abstracted process (workflow) derived from a base process, can provide adaptable task granularity to suit different needs of workflow participants. A novel authorization mechanism is proposed to derive a role's permissions on virtual activities based on the role's permissions on base activities. The proposed authorization mechanisms consider duty-conflict relationships among base activities to enforce SoD.