A policy framework for management of distributed systems
Abstract
Policy-based management is one of the latest developments in network and distributed systems management. Academic and commercial settings, as well as standardisation bodies are concentrating on policy-based management as a very promising solution for managing large-scale distributed systems. The use of policy-based management in areas such as security is particularly attractive. The introduction of new technologies (e.g. active networks, mobile agents) and the use of the Internet for providing services to customers, increase the security concerns associated with today s networked environments. Security management involves specification and deployment of access control policies as well as activities such as registration of users or logging and auditing events for dealing with access to critical resources or security violations. The management actions to be performed when an event occurs depend on the enterprise policy.