COLBAC: Shifting Cybersecurity from Hierarchical to Horizontal Designs

Kevin Gallagher; Santiago Torres-Arias; Nasir Memon; Jessica Feldman

doi:10.1145/3498891.3498903

COLBAC: Shifting Cybersecurity from Hierarchical to Horizontal Designs

Kevin Gallagher, Santiago Torres-Arias, Nasir Memon, Jessica Feldman

Center for Cyber Security

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Cybersecurity suffers from an oversaturation of centralized, hierarchical systems and a lack of exploration in the area of horizontal security, or security techniques and technologies which utilize democratic participation for security decision-making. Because of this, many horizontally governed organizations such as activist groups, worker cooperatives, trade unions, not-for-profit associations, and others are not represented in current cybersecurity solutions, and are forced to adopt hierarchical solutions to cybersecurity problems. This causes power dynamic mismatches that lead to cybersecurity and organizational operations failures. In this work we introduce COLBAC, a collective based access control system aimed at addressing this lack. COLBAC uses democratically authorized capability tokens to express access control policies. It allows for a flexible and dynamic degree of horizontality to meet the needs of different horizontally governed organizations. After introducing COLBAC, we finish with a discussion on future work needed to realize more horizontal security techniques, tools, and technologies.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW 2021
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	13-27
Number of pages	15
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450385732
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3498891.3498903
State	Published - Oct 25 2021
Event	12th New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW 2021 - Virtual, Online, United States Duration: Oct 26 2021 → Oct 28 2021

Publication series

Name	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference	12th New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW 2021
Country/Territory	United States
City	Virtual, Online
Period	10/26/21 → 10/28/21

Keywords

access control
activism
authorization
democracy
distributed systems
horizontality
participation
participatory design
security

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software
Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computer Networks and Communications

Access to Document

10.1145/3498891.3498903

Cite this

COLBAC: Shifting Cybersecurity from Hierarchical to Horizontal Designs. / Gallagher, Kevin; Torres-Arias, Santiago; Memon, Nasir et al.
New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. p. 13-27 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Gallagher, K, Torres-Arias, S, Memon, N & Feldman, J 2021, COLBAC: Shifting Cybersecurity from Hierarchical to Horizontal Designs. in New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW 2021. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 13-27, 12th New Security Paradigms Workshop, NSPW 2021, Virtual, Online, United States, 10/26/21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3498891.3498903

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COLBAC: Shifting Cybersecurity from Hierarchical to Horizontal Designs

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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