Increasingly adopted for use in enterprise security, XACML v2.0 incorporates role-based access controls (RBAC) and lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), and works in conjunction with the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) standard.
“The approval of XACML v2.0 as an OASIS standard builds on a solid base of XACML implementations by major international companies, start-ups and open-source providers,” said OASIS President Patrick Gannon. “Increasingly, XACML is being recognized as an integral part of enterprise security frameworks.”
The adoption of the XACML v2.0 standard, which was developed by a team of experts from Computer Associates, IBM, Sun Microsystems and others, adds to OASIS group’s growing portfolio of security-related specifications.
Currently, the group produces standards for the Application Vulnerability Description Language, WS-Security, and advances specifications for Public Key Infrastructure and Digital Signature Services.
“Access control is a requirement of almost every application,” said Dan Blum, senior vice president and research director for information technology consultancy firm The Burton Group. “XACML goes beyond simply denying or granting information access; it defines the mechanism for creating the rules and policy sets that enable meaningful authorization decisions.”
The OASIS organization itself has been on one side of recent controversy because of the introduction of a new intellectual property policy in early February that allowed for royalty-based patent licensing.
Fought in the media and through discussion forums and email petitions, the battle centered around a new OASIS policy, which included a three-tiered licensing program that allowed specific fees or royalties that could be charged if certain patents were used in the implementation of certain standards.
A coalition of software experts and open-source attorneys, including free society advocate Lawrence Lessig and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, lined up against the organization, claiming that its new IP policy threatened “to undermine our development and licensing model.”
OASIS responded by suggesting that the coalition’s assessment of the new policy was inaccurate and pointed out that, out of 101 specifications currently in committee, less than six required any type of royalty agreement.
