IDSM authorisation policy specification and enforcement in a hierarchial management environment

In large distributed management systems, typically there are large amounts of managed objects. Multiple managers are responsible for the management of different groups of managed objects according to different functional management purposes. Therefore concepts are necessary in order to structure and demarcate the overall set of managed objects according to the responsibilities of several managers and in order to specify dynamically which manager is allowed and which manager is obliged to perform certain management activities on specified sets of managed objects. This article demonstrates how technical consistency and integrity of management information can be provided by using authorisation policies, if several managers are managing the same managed objects.