Access control for semantic data federations in industrial product-lifecycle management

Information integration across company borders becomes increasingly important for the success of product lifecycle management in industry and complex supply chains. Semantic technologies are about to play a crucial role in this integrative process. However, cross-company data exchange requires mechanisms to enable fine-grained access control definition and enforcement, preventing unauthorized leakage of confidential data across company borders. Currently available semantic repositories are not sufficiently equipped to satisfy this important requirement. This paper presents an infrastructure for controlled sharing of semantic data between cooperating business partners. First, we motivate the need for access control in semantic data federations by a case study in the industrial service sector. Furthermore, we present an architecture for controlling access to semantic repositories that is based on our newly developed SemForce security service. Finally, we show the practical feasibility of this architecture by an implementation and several performance experiments.

► This paper addresses access control for semantic data in industrial product-lifecycle management. ► The need for access control is motivated by a case study of a semantic data federation in the industrial service sector. ► An architecture for controlling access to semantic repositories is presented, based on the newly developed SemForce security service. ► The practical feasibility of this architecture is shown by an implementation and several performance experiments.