NIST requests public comments on Draft NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide 1800-3, Attribute Based Access Control. 

Most businesses today use Role Based Access Control (RBAC) to assign access to networks and systems based on job title or defined role. But if an employee changes roles or leaves the company, an administrator must manually change access rights accordingly—perhaps within several systems. As organizations expand and contract, partner with external vendors or systems, and modernize systems, this method of managing user access becomes increasingly difficult and inefficient. 

To help address this growing cybersecurity challenge and support the next generation of identity management, security engineers at the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence developed a reference design for an Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) system. ABAC is an advanced method for managing access rights for people and systems connecting to networks and assets, offering greater efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and security. In fact, Gartner recently predicted that ?by 2020, 70% of enterprises will use attribute-based access control?as the dominant mechanism to protect critical assets, up from less than 5% today.? 
 
This newly available practice guide provides IT and security engineers with critical information they can use to recreate the example solution with the same or similar technologies. Our solution is guided by NIST standards and industry best practices. 
 
Read the NIST press release. 

Comments due: December 4, 2015.
See directions for submitting comments.

Draft SP 1800-3a: Executive Summary 
Draft SP 1800-3b: Approach, Architecture, and Security Characteristics 
Draft SP 1800-3c: How-To Guides (27 MB) 
All files (parts a-c) (83 MB) 
SP 1800-3 homepage (Attribute Based Access Control)