This book focuses on the access control problems in network-based systems and web-based scenarios. It illustrates basic principles and traditional solutions as well as advanced topics such as digital identity management, credential-based access control and trust management, and P2P systems. Besides presenting the concepts, the book gives practical guidelines for designing secure applications in a web-based environment. By using this book, professionals wishing to gain an understanding of the potentials of current access control techniques will be able to exploit existing solutions for specifying accurate protection requirements on their applications. The thorough analysis carried out in the book will also enable them to develop their own access control systems when necessary to deal with novel scenarios. TOC: PART I - ACCESS CONTROL PRINCIPLES Chapter 1 - Security services (from authentication to auditing) Chapter 2 - Access control policies and models Chapter 3 - Traditional solutions to access control Chapter 4 - Administrative policies PART II - ACCESS CONTROL FOR WEB-BASED SYSTEMS Chapter 5 - Protecting static contents Chapter 6 - Protecting dynamic contents PART III - ACCESS CONTROL FOR ADVANCED NETWORK ENVIRONMENT Chapter 7 - Digital identity management Chapter 8 - Credential-based access control and trust management (including negotiation) Chapter 9 - Access control administration, policy interoperability, integration, and composition Chapter 10 - Digital Rights Management Chapter 11 - Privacy Chapter 12 - P2P system security PART IV - SECURE WEB-BASED ARCHITECTURE Chapter 13 - Security issues for web services (including dynamic composition of services) Chapter 14 - Security service components (e.g., Policy information/retrieval/enforcement points) PART V - STANDARDS Chapter 15 - (SAML, XACML, Xrml)

Ernesto Damiani is a professor at the Department of Information Technology of the University of Milan. He is the Vice-Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP). Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati is an associate professor at the Department of Information Technology of the University of Milan. She is co-recipient of the ACM-PODS'99 Best Newcomer Paper Award. Stefano Paraboschi is a professor at the Department of Engineering of the University of Bergamo. He is the co-author of the book ''Database Systems: Concepts, Languages and Architectures'' (McGraw-Hill 1999). Pierangela Samarati is a professor at the Department of Information Technology of the University of Milan. She is co-author of the book ''Database Security,'' Addison-Wesley, 1995. She is co-recipient of the ACM-PODS'99 Best Newcomer Paper Award