XACML is a powerful access control policy language implemented in XML that can provide a standardized way of validating authorization requests. XACML is the de-facto standard for authorization and provides the ability for a 3rd party application/component to enforce attribute based access control.
Given below is a reference architecture on how different XACML components can work in the deployment.
Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) – PEP is a component that would enforce access control to a resource based on the input received from a Policy Decision Point (PDP). In the actual deployment PEP can be an application that would provide access to a resource. PEP would send attributes to the PDP and the PDP would reply back with response that would be either to allow or deny access to a resource.
Policy Decision Point (PDP) – PDP is the XACML engine that makes policy decisions on behalf of an enforcement point. PDP would make policy decisions based on a set of XACML polices that are deployed in the PDP.
Policy Information Point (PIP) – PIP is an information source to which PDP can refer to and get more information on an attribute. PIP can be a user store, a flat file, a DB or any data source. For example if the PDP receives a username as an attribute, it can refer to a user store and get the set of roles assigned to that particular role to make a decision on whether to deny or grant access to a resource.
Policy Administration Point (PAP) – PAP is a component from which XACML policies are created/uploaded, edited and deployed to a PDP. An authorized user can come and create these policies in the PAP and the required policies can be deployed to the PDP.
Policy Repository – Policy Repository is where all the XACML policies are stored, policy repository can also manage multiple versions of a XACML policy.
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