[cap-talk] Definition of Authentication on wiki.erights.org

[Rob Meijer]

On Mon, September 21, 2009 06:34, Karp, Alan H wrote:
> Rob Meijer wrote:
>>
>> When describing access control mechanisms I currently use a 10
>> granularity
>> levels:
>>
>> 1) Object method/facet granularity
>> 2) Object granularity
>> 3) Class granularity
>> 4) Package granularity
>> 5) Process granularity
>> 6) Persistent process granularity
>> 7) Account granularity/ program granularity
>> 8) Person granularity/program author granularity
>> 9) Company granularity/ Organization granularity
>> 10) Society granularity/ culture granularity.
>>
> These are useful categories when talking about access control mechanisms,
> but I was talking about the access control process.  There is overlap
> between these two, but they are not the same.
>

Do you feel the access control 'process' (and more importantly its
terminology) is in some way locked to specific levels of granularity and
thus carries terminology that can not meaningfully be transposed to other
levels of granularity?

I feel there is a lot of merit in trying to always use and define
terminology mechanisms and processes in such a way that it is granularity
neutral, so that patterns or solutions at one set of granularities can
easily be transposed to a different set of granularities without any
linguistic and thus without any mental barriers that let os think about
different granularities using different sets of abstractions.

Rob