Chapter 4
Security Policies
PORTIA: Of a strange nature is the suit you follow; Yet in such rule that the Venetian law
Cannot impugn you as you do proceed.[To Antonio.] You stand within his danger, do you not?
— The Merchant of Venice, IV, i, 177–180.
A security policy defines “secure” for a system or a set of systems. Security policies can be informal or highly mathematical in nature. After defining a security policy precisely, we expand on the nature of “trust” and its relationship to security policies. We also discuss different types of policy models.
4.1 The Nature of Security Policies
Consider a computer system to be a finite-state automaton with a set of transition functions that change state. Then:
Definition 4–1. A security policy ...
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