Role based access control in a telecommunications operations and maintenance network

Abstract: Ericsson develops and builds mobile telecommunication networks. These networks consists of a large number of equipment. Each telecommunication company has a staff of administrators appointed to manage respective networks. In this thesis, we investigate the requirements for an access control model to manage the large number of permissions and equipment in telecommunication networks. Moreover, we show that the existing models do not satisfy the identified requirements. Therefore, we propose a novel RBAC model which is adapted for these conditions. We also investigate some of the most common used commercial tools for administrating RBAC, and evaluate their effectiveness in coping with our new proposed model. However, we find the existing tools limited, and thereby design and partly implement a RBAC managing system which is better suited to the requirements posed by our new model.