Zoned Role-Based Approach to System Design, Implementation, and Access Control of Integrated Web Applications

In today’s world almost all organizations heavily depend on Web-based systems or web applications for their day-to-day operations. In this paper, we will present zoned role-based (ZRB) approach to the design and implementation of integrated web-based systems for organizations and enterprises. In contrast to Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), well-known in computer security, this approach can be used throughout the entire life cycle of a web-based system, and can make the design, implementation, deployment and maintenance of integrated web system more efficient and effective for all organizations and enterprises. In this approach, areas of business, or divisions, departments or designated groups of employees for specific missions are called zones, and for each zone a set of roles are defined; for each role, some web apps, each of which consists of a set of operations, are designed and implemented for users in their respective roles to conduct their business in each associated zone; and control of user access to each operation can then be done explicitly by associating each operation with roles by inference based on the relationships between roles. Within such a zoned role-based integrated system, once a user has roles assigned in each zone he or she is affiliated, he will be able to access, precisely, all the apps and operations needed to fulfill his or her role or roles in respective zone, with only one authentication. Such integration is rather important and convenient especially when users may be affiliated with multiple zones or play multiple roles.