Key management for role hierarchy in distributed systems

As distributed computing system grow in size, complexity and variety of application, the problem of protecting sensitive data from unauthorized disclosure and tampering becomes increasingly important. In this paper, we present a cryptographic key management solution to the role-based access control (RBAC) model in distributed systems. The key management method used for distributed system is decentralized. Each local domain is managed by its local domain security manager and any key modifications of roles in a local domain will not affect the keys of roles in other local domains.