Security Policies in Distributed CSCW and Workflow Systems

In this paper, multiuser collaboration systems are categorized into two groups-computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and workflow systems-based on a historic perspective of their introduction and on their emphasis on user-or process-centric interactions. The goal of the survey is to identify distinct security requirements-related to availability, integrity, confidentiality and privacy, and access leakage-of these systems. Existing role-based security models and their limitations to express security policies in distributed CSCW and workflow systems are presented. Last, we present an overview of a framework that we have developed to specify, verify, and enforce security policies in distributed CSCW systems.