Security and access control for a human-centric collaborative commerce system

The rise of globally distributed computer based workspaces has enabled the incorporation of collaboration in electronic commerce (e-Commerce) systems. Working in collaborative environments with e-Commerce technologies leads to the subject of collaborative commerce (or c-Commerce). C-Commerce creates dynamic collaboration and harnesses organizations' information and knowledge base into a computer-based framework to support personalized access to potentially all participants and information in a given community. One of the main concerns in such a system is security and control of access. Many distributed organizations and individuals want to work together and share their information and knowledge in the process. At the same time, they need to protect their privacy and sensitive information and establish proper protocols for access and sharing activities. This paper discusses a human-centered collaborative commerce system (HCCS) and its security and access control design. Specifically, it presents three security modules and components that will support collaborative exchange and processes. We, then, introduce an improved access control method and algorithm which is role-, group-, and task-based (RGT-based access control) that ensures information and resources access efficiently. Developing further access control algorithms and implementations will be considered in a variety of case studies in future work.