Planning Report 02-1

The Economic

Impact of Role-Based

Access Control

Prepared by:

RIT

for

National Institute of

Standards & Technology

Program Office

Strategic Planning and

Economic Analysis Group

March 2002

U.S Department of Commerce

Technology Administration
The Economic Impact of

Role-Based Access Control

Final Report

SUBMITTED TO:

Gregory Tassey, Ph.D.

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Acquisition and Assistance Division

Building 101, Room A1000

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001

SUBMITTED BY:

Michael P. Gallaher, Ph.D.

Alan C. O’Connor, B.A.

Brian Kropp, Ph.D.

RTI

3040 Cornwallis Road

P.O. Box 12194

Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194

RTI Project Number 07007.012

March 2002
The Economic Impact of

Role-Based Access Control

Final Report

March 2002

SUBMITTED TO:

Gregory Tassey, Ph.D.

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Acquisition and Assistance Division

Building 101, Room A1000

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001

SUBMITTED BY:

Michael P. Gallaher, Ph.D.

Alan C. O’Connor, B.A.

Brian Kropp, Ph.D.

RTI

Health, Social, and Economics Research

Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

RTI Project Number: 07007.012
iii 

Contents 

 Executive Summary ES-1 

 1. Introduction 1-1 

1.1 Trends in Computer Applications and Security Needs........ 1-1 

1.2 NIST’s Contributions to RBAC ........................................... 1-2 

1.2.1 Generic Technologies............................................ 1-3 

1.2.2 Infratechnologies ................................................... 1-5 

1.3 Overview of Approach to Measure the Economic 

Impact of NIST’s RBAC Project.......................................... 1-6 

 2. The Evolution of RBAC 2-1 

2.1 RBAC Technical Characteristics......................................... 2-2 

2.1.1 Users, Roles, and Permissions................................ 2-4 

2.1.2 RBAC Models and Evolution.................................. 2-6 

2.1.3 Alternative Access Control Technologies................ 2-8 

2.2 Benefits of RBAC............................................................. 2-11 

2.2.1 Simplified Systems Administration ....................... 2-11 

2.2.2 Enhanced Organizational Productivity ................. 2-12 

2.2.3 Reduction in New Employee Downtime .............. 2-13 

2.2.4 Enhanced Systems Security and Integrity.............. 2-14 

2.2.5 Simplified Regulatory Compliance....................... 2-14 

2.3 RBAC-Enabled Product Supply Chain .............................. 2-17 

2.3.1 Software Developers............................................ 2-18 

2.3.2 End Users ............................................................ 2-19 
iv 

 3. Barriers to RBAC Development and 

Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 3-1 

3.1 Barriers to Technology Development and Integration 

of RBAC Models into Software Products ............................ 3-1 

3.1.1 Technical Expertise Outside the Software 

Industry’s Domain ................................................. 3-3 

3.1.2 Lack of Consistent Definition................................. 3-3 

3.1.3 Difficulty of Appropriating Returns to 

Investment............................................................. 3-4 

3.2 Barriers to Implementation of RBAC-Enabled Products....... 3-6 

3.2.1 Role Engineering ................................................... 3-7 

3.2.2 Migration Costs ..................................................... 3-8 

3.2.3 Systems Structure and Interoperability.................... 3-9 

3.2.4 Product Acceptance and Comparison .................. 3-10 

3.3 NIST RBAC Project Activities........................................... 3-11 

3.3.1 Producing Professional Publications..................... 3-12 

3.3.2 Applying for Patents ............................................ 3-13 

3.3.3 Sponsoring Conferences and Workshops.............. 3-13 

3.3.4 Establishing and Funding Development and 

Demonstration Projects........................................ 3-14 

3.4 The Impact of NIST’s Contributions ................................. 3-14 

 4. Analysis Framework 4-1 

4.1 Modeling Firm-Level Benefits of Commercial RBAC 

Products............................................................................ 4-2 

4.2 Diffusion of Commercial RBAC Products—Industrylevel Adoption .................................................................. 4-5 

4.3 Summary of Impact Hypothesis and Cost Metrics .............. 4-7 

4.3.1 The Benefits of RBAC............................................. 4-7 

4.4 NIST’s Impact on the Development and Adoption of 

RBAC Products and Services ............................................. 4-9 

4.5 Conceptual Approach to Modeling the Economic 

Impacts of NIST/ITL’s RBAC Project................................. 4-11 

4.5.1 Expressing the Net Benefits of RBAC.................... 4-11 

4.5.2 Modeling the Impact of NIST/ITL’s RBAC 

Project................................................................. 4-13 

4.5.3 Calculating Measures of Economic Return ........... 4-13 
v 

 5. Primary Data Collection 5-1 

5.1 RBAC Software Developers ............................................... 5-1 

5.1.1 Software Developer Population and Interview 

Methodology......................................................... 5-3 

5.1.2 Topics Covered in the Software Developer 

Interviews.............................................................. 5-4 

5.2 RBAC Software End Users ................................................. 5-5 

5.2.1 Internet Survey Population and Methodology......... 5-5 

5.2.2 Topics Covered in the Internet Survey.................... 5-6 

5.3 A Case Study of an RBAC End User ................................... 5-7 

 6. RBAC Case Study: Multiline Insurance

Company 6-1 

6.1 RBAC Implementation Background ................................... 6-2 

6.2 Benefits of Using RBAC to Manage Extranet Users ............. 6-2 

6.2.1 Simplifying Systems Administration and 

Maintenance ......................................................... 6-4 

6.2.2 Enhancing Organizational Productivity .................. 6-5 

6.3 Benefits of Using RBAC to Manage Employees 

(Intranet Users).................................................................. 6-6 

6.3.1 Reduction in New Employee Downtime ................ 6-6 

6.3.2 Simplified Systems Administration and 

Maintenance ......................................................... 6-7 

6.4 RBAC Implementation Costs.............................................. 6-7 

6.4.1 Software and Hardware Expenses .......................... 6-7 

6.4.2 Systems Administrators’ Labor Expenses................. 6-8 

6.4.3 Role Engineering Expenses..................................... 6-8 

6.5 Time Series of Benefits and Costs ...................................... 6-9 

 7. Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact 

Metrics 7-1 

7.1 Quantified End-User benefit and cost Metrics.................... 7-1 

7.1.1 End-User Benefits .................................................. 7-2 

7.1.2 RBAC Reduces Administrative Processing Time...... 7-3 

7.1.3 RBAC Increases Productivity.................................. 7-5 

7.1.4 RBAC Reduces the Severity and Frequency of 

Security Violations................................................. 7-7 

7.1.5 End-User Customization and Installation Costs....... 7-8 
vi 

7.2 R&D Costs Associated with Developing RBAC 

Products and Services ..................................................... 7-10 

7.2.1 Software Vendors’ R&D Costs.............................. 7-10 

7.2.2 In-house End-User Development Costs ................ 7-11 

7.3 Current and Projected Diffusion of RBAC ........................ 7-12 

7.4 NIST’s Impact on the Development and Adoption of 

RBAC.............................................................................. 7-15 

7.4.1 Accelerated Adoption and Availability................. 7-15 

7.4.2 Reduced R&D Expenditures................................. 7-16 

7.4.3 Reduced End User Customization and 

Implementation Costs .......................................... 7-18 

7.4.4 RBAC Product Enhancement................................ 7-18 

 8. Measures of Economic Return 8-1 

8.1 Baseline Time Series of the Benefits and Costs of 

RBAC................................................................................ 8-1 

8.1.1 Benefit and Cost Components................................ 8-2 

8.1.2 Diffusion of RBAC by Employee............................. 8-3 

8.1.3 Time Series of RBAC Benefits and Costs................. 8-4 

8.2 NIST’s Impact on the Benefits and Costs of RBAC.............. 8-4 

8.2.1 NIST’s Impact........................................................ 8-5 

8.2.2 Time Series of Counterfactual Benefits and 

Costs ..................................................................... 8-6 

8.3 Calculating Measures of Economic Return......................... 8-6 

 References R-1 

 Appendixes 

A Questionnaire for RBAC Technology Developers...............A-1 

B Questionnaire for Information and System Security 

Administrators................................................................... B-1 
vii 

Figures 

 Figure 1-1 Approach to Estimating the Economic Returns from NIST’s 

RBAC Project............................................................................. 1-7 

 Figure 2-1 Role-Based Access Control ........................................................ 2-4 

 Figure 2-2 RBAC Definitions....................................................................... 2-6 

 Figure 2-3 Alternative Access Control Technologies.................................... 2-9 

 Figure 2-4 An Example of Delegation Administration................................ 2-13 

 Figure 2-5 Heath Care Industry Example of Using RBAC to Control 

Access to Sensitive Information................................................ 2-16 

 Figure 3-1 Overview of NIST’s Impact ...................................................... 3-16 

 

 Figure 4-1 Flow of End-User Costs and Benefits .......................................... 4-2 

 Figure 4-2 Reducing End-User System Customization and 

Implementation Costs and Time................................................. 4-4 

 Figure 4-3 End-User Adoption of RBAC Products and Services .................... 4-5 

 Figure 5-1 Overview of Data Collection ..................................................... 5-2 

 Figure 6-1 Quarterly Flow of Net Benefits................................................. 6-11 

 Figure 8-1 Aggregate Penetration Rates for Low, Medium, and High 

Rate Scenarios ........................................................................... 8-4 
viii 

Tables 

 

 Table 1-1 Overview of NIST’s RBAC Activities........................................... 1-4 

 Table 2-1 Sampling of Software Developers Currently Offering RBAC 

and RBAC-Enabled Products.................................................... 2-19 

 Table 3-1 NIST-Sponsored RBAC Projects................................................ 3-15 

 Table 4-1 Benefits of RBAC Relative to Alternative Access Control 

Technologies ............................................................................. 4-8 

 Table 4-2 NIST’s Impact on Commercial RBAC Products and Services ..... 4-10 

 Table 5-1 Interviewed Software Developers’ Background........................... 5-4 

 Table 5-2 End-User Internet Survey Respondents by Industry ..................... 5-6 

 Table 6-1 Summary of the Company’s Costs and Estimated Benefits........... 6-3 

 Table 6-2 Time Series of the Company’s Costs and Benefits ..................... 6-10 

 Table 7-1 End-User Benefits of RBAC ........................................................ 7-2 

 Table 7-2 Average Task Time (Minutes) by Access Control System ............. 7-4 

 Table 7-3 Number of Times Administrative Tasks Are Performed ............... 7-4 

 Table 7-4 Systems Administration Benefit for a Typical Company with 

100,000 Employees ................................................................... 7-5 

 Table 7-5 Reduction in New Employee Downtime (hours) ......................... 7-6 

 Table 7-6 Benefits from Reduced Downtime for a Typical Firm with 

100,000 Employees ................................................................... 7-7 

 Table 7-7 Average Cost per Security Violation 1999 – 2001 

($thousands) .............................................................................. 7-8 
ix 

 Table 7-8 End-User Customization Costs, Evidence from Internet 

Survey ....................................................................................... 7-9 

 Table 7-9 One End-User’s In-House RBAC Development Costs................ 7-12 

 Table 7-10 Respondents’ Current Stage of RBAC Development .................. 7-13 

 Table 7-11 RBAC Penetration Rates by Industry, 2005 ............................... 7-14 

 Table 8-1 Key Benefit and Cost Estimates................................................... 8-2 

 Table 8-2 Industry Employment and Baseline Diffusion Scenarios.............. 8-3 

 Table 8-3 Baseline RBAC Benefits and Costs ($millions)............................. 8-5 

 Table 8-4 Key Metrics for NIST’s Impact.................................................... 8-6 

 Table 8-5 Time Series of Industry Net Benefits With and Without 

NIST’s Contributions ($millions)................................................. 8-7 

 Table 8-6 Time Series of Net Benefits due to NIST’s Contributions and 

NIST Expenditures ($millions) .................................................... 8-8 

 Table 8-7 Measures of Economic Return to the NIST/ITL RBAC Project 

($millions) ................................................................................. 8-8 
ES-1 

 Executive Summary 

Information technology has enabled U.S. businesses to improve 

their employees’ productivity, integrate their supply chains, and 

automate and improve their interactions with customers. 

Increasingly, more functions, including inventory management, 

invoice payments, and customer support, are handled over intranets 

and the Internet. 

As organizations increase the functionality and information offered 

on internal and external networks, controlling access to information 

and other resources becomes more complex and costly. In 

addition, security failures can disrupt an organization’s operations 

and can have financial, legal, human safety, personal privacy, and 

public confidence impacts. 

Access control systems within a computer network are used to 

control the actions, functions, applications, and operations of 

legitimate users within an organization and to protect the integrity 

of the information stored within the system. Role-based access 

control (RBAC) is a relatively new access control system that maps 

to organizational-specific structures in a way that reduces direct 

and indirect administrative costs and improves security. 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began 

working on RBAC in the early 1990s after a study of federal agency 

security needs identified the need to develop a better method for 

managing large networked systems and complex access issues 

(Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992). Over the past decade, NIST’s 

RBAC project has made significant contributions to the 

development and adoption of RBAC through publishing in the 

This study quantifies the 

benefits of role-based 

access control (RBAC) and 

estimates NIST’s impact on 

the development and 

adoption of RBAC. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

ES-2 

professional literature, sponsoring conferences and outreach 

projects, and supplying infrastructure tools to industry. 

The objectives of this study was to conduct a microeconomics 

impact assessment of the 

Z benefits of RBAC relative to alternative access control 

systems, and 

Z economic return from the NIST/Information Technology 

Laboratory (ITL) RBAC project’s contributions to the 

development and adoption of RBAC. 

Based on interviews with software developers and companies using 

RBAC-enabled products, we projected that the net present value of 

RBAC through 2006 will be approximately $671 million. NIST’s 

contributions were estimated to account for 44 percent of the 

benefits of RBAC, leading to a social rate of return to the 

NIST/RBAC project of approximately 62 percent. 

 ES.1 OVERVIEW OF RBAC 

Although role-based security models have existed for 20 years, their 

application has until recently been limited. To date, most systems 

have based access control on the discretion of the owner or 

administrator of the data as opposed to basing access on the often 

nondiscretionary organization-wide policies as is done with RBAC. 

These owner-controlled systems worked adequately for small local 

area networks (LAN) but have become cumbersome to manage and 

error prone as networking capabilities have increased. 

RBAC is a technology that offers an alternative to traditional 

discretionary access control (DAC) and mandatory access control 

(MAC) policies. RBAC allows companies to specify and enforce 

security policies that map naturally to the organization’s structure. 

That is, the natural method for assigning access to information in a 

company is based on the individual’s need for the information, 

which is a function of their job or role within the organization. 

RBAC allows a security administrator to use the natural structure of 

the organization to implement and enforce security policy. This 

technology decreases the cost of network administration while 

improving the enforcement of network security policies. 

RBAC allows companies to 

specify and enforce security 

policies that map naturally 

to the organization’s 

structure. 
Executive Summary 

ES-3 

 ES.2 NIST’S CONTIBUIONS TO RBAC 

NIST’s RBAC project responded to a demonstrated need for 

improved security mechanisms and the related standards to support 

the development and adoption of new complex networked security 

systems. At that time industry believed that a lack of 

standardization was hampering the development of appropriate 

access control products, and that a key to the success of such a 

system would be its ability to operate across a wide range of 

operating systems (Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992). 

In 1992 NIST published the first comprehensive RBAC model. 

Although the concept of roles has been used in software application 

and mainframe environments for at least 25 years, it has only been 

within the last decade that RBAC has emerged as a full-fledged 

model as mature as traditional mandatory and discretionary access 

control concepts. The roots of NIST’s early RBAC model included 

the use of groups in UNIX and other operating systems, privilege 

groupings in database management systems, and separation of duty 

concepts described in early papers. The modern concept of RBAC 

as used within the research community and implemented within a 

growing number of commercial implementation originates from this 

early work. The impact of this work includes the ability to specify 

and enforce a wider range of access control policies, thereby 

reducing the number of illicit user accesses as well increasing 

administrative and end-user productivity. 

NIST’s RBAC project has accelerated the introduction and 

acceptance of RBAC-based products in the marketplace. In 

addition, NIST’s contributions have reduced the cost of R&D for 

private companies developing network security products based on 

RBAC. 

NIST’s contributions range from developing and formalizing the 

fundamental concepts of RBAC models to demonstrating their 

capabilities and providing implementation tools to industry. These 

contributions can be grouped into two general categories: 

Z the development of generic technologies that provide the 

technology base for RBAC market applications, and 

Z the development of infratechnologies that support 

implementation and interoperability across different 

systems. 

One software company 

stated that “...NIST’s 

contribution was critical in 

establishing a taxonomy and 

a shared vocabulary for us, 

our customers and the 

industry as a whole.” 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

ES-4 

NIST developed the technical specifications and formal description 

of the RBAC model (Ferraiolo and Kuhn, 1992). Since the first 

formal specification, NIST has expanded its model by incorporating 

different types of role relationships. The papers NIST has published 

and the patents it has received have been widely cited by 

academics and have provided the technology base for many of the 

commercial products being introduced by software vendors. In 

addition, NIST has co-founded a series of ACM workshops on 

RBAC through which close to 100 papers from sources all over the 

world have been published. This workshop series has evolved into 

the present ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and 

Technology now in its 7th year. 

NIST has also developed specific tools for implementing RBAC for 

the World Wide Web (Barkley et al., 1997). The tools NIST has 

developed to assist in implementing RBAC Web include RGPAdmin, a tool for managing role/permission relationships, and 

AccesMgr, a graphical user interface for managing access control 

lists for Windows NT files. NIST has demonstrated the use of RBAC 

for the Web for corporate intranets (Ferraiolo, Barkley, and Kuhn, 

1999) and for the health care industry (Barkley, 1995) and has 

implemented RBAC on the NSA Synergy secure operating system. 

NIST has developed the Role Control Center as a reference 

implementation and a demonstration platform for the viability of 

advanced RBAC concepts. The center disseminates information on 

concepts ranging from multiple inheritance hierarchies, to the 

enforcement of a variety of separation of duty policies across 

multiple heterogeneous servers and applications. 

NIST, in conjunction with Ravi Sanhdu and Serban Gavrila, has 

also proposed a standard for RBAC. The standard is intended to 

reduce the uncertainty and confusion about RBAC’s utility and 

meaning and to serve as a foundation for product development, 

evaluation, and procurement specifications (Ferraiolo, 2001). 

 ES.3 ESTIMATING THE BENEFITS OF RBAC 

To estimate the benefits of RBAC we conducted telephone 

interviews and Internet surveys with software developers and 

organizations (referred to as end users) that integrate RBAC 

products into their business operations. In addition, a case study 

Generic technologies 

provide the technology 

base from which market 

applications are derived 

(Tassey, 1997). 

Infratechnologies are a set 

of “technical tools” that 

include scientific and 

engineering data, 

measurement and test 

methods, and practices and 

techniques that are widely 

used in industry (Tassey, 

1997). 
Executive Summary 

ES-5 

was conducted with a multi-product insurance company. The 

information collected was used to quantify the benefits and costs 

per employee managed by RBAC systems. 

The growth of employees managed using RBAC systems was 

projected through the year 2006. It is estimated that by 2006 

between 30 and 50 percent of employees in the service sector and 

between 10 and 25 percent of employees in nonservice sectors will 

be managed by RBAC systems. Because of the uncertainty 

surrounding the penetration estimates, high, medium and low 

penetration scenarios were estimated. The remainder of this 

executive summary refers to the medium penetration scenario. 

Technical and economic metrics for RBAC’s impact on end users 

were developed for the Internet surveys. Key impact metrics are 

administrative savings associated with managing access to 

information systems and reduced employee downtime from waiting 

to receive system access. These RBAC systems administrative and 

productivity benefits lead to an annual operating benefit of $43.71 

per employee. 

However, the benefit of RBAC will not be realized without costs. 

Software developers indicated that on average they incurred 

$550,000 in R&D expenditures to develop RBAC-enabled products. 

In addition, based on our in-depth case study with a multiproduct 

financial services firm, the average end-user customization and 

implementation costs are estimated to be $78.36 per employee. 

These costs are incurred once per employee. 

Table ES-1 summarizes the benefits and costs associated with 

RBAC. The NPV of net benefits (benefits less costs) through 2006 

are $671.1 million. Costs are expressed as negative benefits. 

 ES.4 MEASURES OF ECONOMIC RETURN TO THE 

NIST/RBAC PROJECT 

Based on interviews with software developers and end users of 

RBAC products, it was estimated that the activities of the 

NIST/RBAC project 

Z accelerated the development and adoption of RBAC by 1 

year and 

RBAC administrative 

and productivity 

benefits lead to an 

annual operating 

benefit of $43.71 

per employee. This 

leads to a net 

benefit through the 

year 2006 of $671 

million. 

“The NIST implementation 

was a groundbreaking and 

significant contribution to 

software technology.” 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

ES-6 

Table ES-1. NPV of Benefits and Costs of RBAC through 2006 

 NPV through 2006 ($2000) 

R&D expenditures: software developers and in-house development –53.2 

End-users’ customization and implementation costs –161.7 

End-users’ operation benefits 886.0 

Net benefits of RBAC 671.1 

Z lowered research and development costs for software 

vendors by approximately 6 percent. 

Using this information we construct two times series that show the 

net benefits of RBAC with and without NIST’s contributions. The 

difference between the with and without NIST time series is the 

economic impact of the NIST/RBAC project (i.e., it is the change in 

net benefits attributable to NIST). As shown in Table ES-2, the net 

present value of NIST’s impact on the benefits of RBAC is $295 

million under the medium penetration scenario. 

Year 

Baseline 

(with NIST) 

Counterfactual 

(without NIST) 

Total Change in Net 

Benefits (NBt ) 

1992 — — — 

1993 — — — 

1994 — — — 

1995 — — — 

1996 –5.05 — –5.05 

1997 –5.05 –5.50 0.45 

1998 –5.05 –5.50 0.45 

1999 –5.05 –5.50 0.45 

2000 –18.08 –5.50 –12.58 

2001 –0.36 –16.90 16.54 

2002 19.84 –0.33 20.17 

2003 60.26 18.54 41.72 

2004 207.08 56.32 150.76 

2005 308.51 193.53 114.97 

2006 337.85 288.33 49.52 

NPV (2000) 671.08 376.31 294.77 

aAll numbers have been adjusted to 2000 dollars. 

Table ES-2. Time Series 

of the Net Benefits of 

RBAC With and Without 

NIST’s Contributions 

($millions)a
Executive Summary 

ES-7 

We used NIST’s expenditures and their related impact on the net 

benefits of RBAC to calculate a NPV, benefit-cost ratio, and an 

internal rate of return (IRR) for the NIST/RBAC project. These three 

measures of economic return are presented in Table ES-3. The 

measures are shown for the high, medium, and low penetration 

scenarios. The NPV of NIST’s impact under the medium penetration 

scenario is $294.8 million. The benefit-cost ratio ranges from 69 to 

158, and the IRR ranges from 39 to 90 percent. 

The impacts of NIST’s RBAC project quantified in Table ES-2 and 

Table ES-3 include only the administrative and productivity 

benefits. They do not reflect the potential security benefits 

associated with RBAC. Most companies interviewed indicated that 

RBAC would reduce the frequency and severity of security 

violations. However, because this information is highly sensitive, 

this study was not able to quantify the benefit of improved system 

security. For this reason the impact estimates presented above are 

conservative and should be considered lower-bound estimates of 

the benefits of RBAC and the economic return from the NIST/RBAC 

project. 

Table ES-3. Measures of Economic Return to the NIST/ITL RBAC Project ($millions)a 

 High Medium Low 

a. NPV change in net benefits 427.42 294.77 185.71 

b. NPV NIST expenditure 2.70 2.70 2.70 

NPV of the NIST/ITL RBAC project (a – b) 425 292 183 

Benefit-cost ratio 158 109 69 

Internal rate of return 90% 62% 39% 

aAll numbers have been adjusted to 2000 dollars. 

“This is probably one of the 

best examples of how an 

organization like NIST can 

help the private sector. The 

existence of a widely 

visible prototype advanced 

the concrete understanding 

of corporate IT architects so 

significantly that we were 

able to get unusually good 

early feedback validating 

and influencing our design 

choices.” 
1-1 

 1 Introduction 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began 

working on role-based access control (RBAC) in the early 1990s 

after a study of federal agency security needs identified the need to 

develop a better method for managing large networked systems and 

complex access issues (Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992). The 

objective of this study is to conduct a microeconomics impact 

assessment of the NIST/Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) 

RBAC project. 

This section discusses some of the trends in computer applications 

and security needs, provides an overview of NIST’s role in 

developing RBAC, and outlines the approach used to estimate the 

economic impact of the NIST/ITL RBAC project. 

 1.1 TRENDS IN COMPUTER APPLICATIONS AND 

SECURITY NEEDS 

Information technology has enabled U.S. businesses to improve 

their employees’ productivity, integrate their supply chains, and 

automate and improve their interactions with customers. The use 

of external web sites for marketing and recruiting is common, and 

internal corporate intranets provide employees and suppliers easy 

access to organizational resources and information. Increasingly, 

more functions, including inventory management, invoice 

payments, and customer support, are handled over intranets and 

the Internet, regardless of the underlying information technology 

infrastructure (Barkley et al., 1997). 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

1-2 

As organizations increase the functionality and information offered 

on internal and external networks, controlling access to information 

and other resources becomes more important and complex. 

Organizations must develop and enforce access policies that 

protect sensitive and confidential information; prevent conflict of 

interest; and protect the system and its contents from intentional 

and unintentional damage, theft, and unauthorized disclosure. 

Security failures can disrupt an organization’s operations and can 

have financial, legal, human safety, personal privacy, and public 

confidence impacts (Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992). 

Safeguarding information resources can be very complicated and 

expensive. Network administrators must maintain access control 

lists that specify the resources each user is allowed to access. They 

must issue passwords and permissions to enforce the access lists 

and update them as personnel change and as users’ needs and 

permissions change. Maintaining access while enforcing a 

comprehensive, coherent security policy has become an expensive 

and complex undertaking. Simplifying it could have an important 

impact on the cost and effectiveness of electronic resource access 

policies. 

RBAC is a technology that offers an alternative to traditional 

discretionary access control (DAC) and mandatory access control 

(MAC) policies. RBAC allows companies to specify and enforce 

security policies that map naturally to the organization’s structure. 

That is, the natural method for assigning access to information in a 

company is based on the individual’s need for the information, 

which is a function of his job, or role, within the organization. 

RBAC allows a security administrator to use the natural structure of 

the organization to implement and enforce security policy. This 

technology decreases the cost of network administration while 

improving the enforcement of network security policies. 

 1.2 NIST’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO RBAC 

NIST’s RBAC project responded to a demonstrated need for 

improved security mechanisms and the related standards to support 

the development and adoption of new complex networked security 

systems. At that time industry believed that a lack of 

standardization was hampering the development of appropriate 
Section 1 — Introduction 

1-3 

access control products, and that a key to the success of such a 

system would be its ability to operate across a wide range of 

operating systems (Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992). 

In 1992 NIST published the first comprehensive RBAC model. 

Although the concept of roles has been used in software application 

and mainframe environments for at least 25 years, it has only been 

within the last decade that RBAC has emerged as a full-fledged 

model as mature as traditional mandatory and discretionary access 

control concepts. The roots of NIST’s early RBAC model included 

the use of groups in UNIX and other operating systems, privilege 

groupings in database management systems, and separation of duty 

concepts described in early papers. The modern concept of RBAC 

as used within the research community and implemented within a 

growing number of commercial implementation originates from this 

early work. The impact of this work includes the ability to specify 

and enforce a wider range of access control policies, thereby 

reducing the number of illicit user accesses as well increasing 

administrative and end-user productivity. 

NIST’s RBAC project has accelerated the introduction and 

acceptance of RBAC-based products in the marketplace. In 

addition, NIST’s contributions have reduced the cost of R&D for 

private companies developing network security products based on 

RBAC. 

NIST’s contributions range from developing and formalizing the 

fundamental concepts of RBAC models to demonstrating their 

capabilities and providing implementation tools to industry. 

Table 1-1 provides an overview of NIST’s RBAC activities. These 

contributions can be grouped into two general categories: 

Z the development of generic technologies that provide the 

technology base for RBAC market applications, and 

Z the development of infratechnologies that support 

implementation and interoperability across different 

systems. 

 1.2.1 Generic Technologies 

NIST developed the technical specifications and formal description 

of the RBAC model (Ferraiolo and Kuhn, 1992). Since the first 

formal specification, NIST has expanded its model by incorporating 

Public funding is frequently 

used to support the 

development of generic 

technologies and 

infratechnologies because 

these technologies possess 

many of the characteristics 

of a public good. Public 

goods, unlike private 

goods, are typically 

underprovided by private 

markets as compared to 

their socially optimal levels 

of provision (Stiglitz, 1988). 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

1-4 

Table 1-1. Overview of NIST’s RBAC Activities 

NIST’s contributions range from developing and formalizing the fundamental concepts of RBAC models to 

demonstrating their capabilities and providing implementation tools to industry. 

Category Activities 

Patents Implementation of Role Based Access Control in Multi-level Secure Systems (Kuhn). U.S. 

Patent #6,023,765 

Workflow Management Employing Role-Based Access Control (Barkley). U.S. Patent 

#6,088,679 

A Method for Visualizing and Managing Role-Based Policies on Identity-Based Systems 

(Ferraiolo and Gavrila) (pending) 

Implementation of Role/Group Permission Association Using Object Access Type (Barkley, 

Cincotta). U.S. Patent #6,202,066 

Papers “Role Based Access Control: Features and Motivations” (Ferraiolo, Cugini, Kuhn, 1995), 

Computer Security Applications Conference 

“Mutual Exclusion of Roles as a Means of Implementing Separation of Duty in Role-Based 

Access Control Systems” (Kuhn, 1997), Second ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access 

Control 

“Implementing Role Based Access Control Using Object Technology” (Barkley, 1995), First 

ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access Control 

“Role-Based Access Control for the Web” (Barkley, Kuhn, Rosenthal, Skall, Cincotta, 1998), 

CALS Expo International & 21st Century Commerce 1998: Global Business Solutions for the 

New Millennium 

“Specifying and Managing Role-Based Access Control within a Corporate Intranet” (Ferraiolo, 

Barkley, 1997), Second ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access Control 

“Role Based Access Control for the World Wide Web” (Barkley, Cincotta, Ferraiolo, Gavrila, 

Kuhn, 1997), 20th National Computer Security Conference 

Conferences ACM workshop on RBAC 

RBAC demonstrations 

Standards Development A Proposed Standard for Role-Based Access Control (Ferraiolo et al., 2001) 

Web Tools and Software RBAC for UNIX/POSIX/LINUX 

RBAC for Windows NT 

RGP-Admin 

AccesMgr 

Industry Outreach 

Projects 

RBAC for Synergy 

RBAC Small Business Innovation Research (RBAC SBIR) 

RBAC for the World Wide Web (RBAC/Web) 

Role Control Center 
Section 1 — Introduction 

1-5 

different types of role relationships (Kuhn, 1997; Gavrila and 

Barkley, 1998; Barkley and Cincotta, 1998). 

The papers NIST has published and the patents it has received have 

been widely cited by academics and have provided the technology 

base for many of the commercial products being introduced by 

software vendors. NIST has presented its work at a number of 

professional conferences and has co-founded a series of Association 

for Computing Machinery (ACM) workshops on RBAC. Now in its 

seventh year, this workshop series has published close to 100 

papers from sources all over the world. NIST has received two 

patents for its RBAC models and has applications pending for two 

more. 

Most of the companies interviewed indicated that they would not 

have pursued the development of these generic technologies on 

their own. Thus, by demonstrating the technical feasibility of RBAC 

through its publications and conferences, NIST has reduced 

development uncertainty and provided the technology base to 

accelerate the introduction of RBAC features into commercial 

access control systems. 

 1.2.2 Infratechnologies 

NIST has developed specific tools for implementing RBAC for the 

World Wide Web (Barkley et al., 1997). The tools NIST has 

developed to assist in implementing RBAC Web include RGPAdmin, a tool for managing role/permission relationships, and 

AccesMgr, a graphical user interface for managing access control 

lists for Windows NT files. NIST has demonstrated the use of RBAC 

for the Web, for corporate intranets (Ferraiolo, Barkley, and Kuhn, 

1999), and for the health care industry (Barkley, 1995) and has 

implemented RBAC on the NSA Synergy secure operating system. 

NIST, in conjunction with Ravi Sanhdu and Serban Gavrila, has 

also proposed a standard for RBAC. The standard is intended to 

reduce the uncertainty and confusion about RBAC’s utility and 

meaning and to serve as a foundation for product development, 

evaluation, and procurement specifications (Ferraiolo et al., 2001). 

NIST has developed the Role Control Center as a reference 

implementation and a demonstration platform for the viability of 

advanced RBAC concepts. The center disseminates information on 

Generic technologies 

provide the technology 

base from which market 

applications are derived 

(Tassey, 1997). 

Infratechnologies are a set 

of “technical tools” that 

include scientific and 

engineering data, 

measurement and test 

methods, and practices and 

techniques that are widely 

used in industry (Tassey, 

1997). 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

1-6 

concepts ranging from multiple inheritance hierarchies, to the 

enforcement of a variety of separation of duty policies across 

multiple heterogeneous servers and applications. 

NIST’s role in developing RBAC infratechnologies has been 

important because these technology tools cannot easily be 

embodied in commercial products or processes. As a result, the 

private sector has difficulty appropriating returns from the 

development of infratechnologies. This market failure typically 

leads to an underinvestment in infratechnologies in the absence of 

government support. 

 1.3 OVERVIEW OF APPROACH TO MEASURE THE 

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF NIST’S RBAC 

PROJECT 

The approach to measure the economic impact of NIST’s RBAC 

project consists of the five steps shown in Figure 1-1. The first step 

(discussed in Section 2) compared the technical specifications of 

the RBAC model with other methods for access control. This 

comparison provided the input needed for modeling the 

incremental benefits of RBAC. The analysis also included a 

detailed description of NIST’s role in developing and defining 

RBAC and the market failures that led to underinvestment by 

industry. Information was obtained from interviews with industry 

experts throughout the supply chain and from academic and 

industry publications. 

In the next step (presented in Section 3) we developed a detailed 

model of the incremental benefits of RBAC relative to the other 

access control methods. The model captures the benefits of RBAC’s 

simplification of network administration and defines metrics for 

quantifying these benefits. RBAC’s potential benefits of increasing 

the effectiveness of network security policy are included in the 

theoretical model even though empirical data on these benefits are 

limited. 

Step 3 required that we quantify the benefits and cost of RBAC 

development and deployment. Section 4 describes the surveys and 

case studies used to obtain the data and presents the quantified 

benefit and cost impact metrics we used to estimate economic 
Section 1 — Introduction 

1-7 

Figure 1-1. Approach to Estimating the Economic Returns from NIST’s RBAC Project 

Our approach involved developing a baseline and two counterfactual scenarios. 

Step 2: Model Benefits of RBAC

✓ Model Network Administration

Benefits

✓ Model Security Benefits

Step 1: Characterize RBAC and

NIST Program

✓ Compare with DAC and MAC

✓ Describe NIST’s role in

development and definition

Step 3: Quantify Cost of RBAC

Development and Deployment

✓ Quantify NIST’s program cost

✓ Quantify company pull cost

✓ Quantify impact of NIST on

private cost

Step 4: Forecast RBAC

Diffusion

✓ Quantify current use

✓ Forecast future use

✓ Quantify impact of NIST

Step 5: Calculate Measures of

Economic Return

✓ Develop with-NIST benefit and

cost timeline

✓ Develop without-NIST benefit

and cost timeline

✓ Calculate economic return

impacts. Costs include NIST’s program costs, the cost to 

developers of computer programs that incorporate RBAC, and the 

cost to companies that purchase and use RBAC-based tools. 

In Step 4 we forecasted the diffusion of RBAC technology with and 

without the NIST RBAC project. This forecast was used in Step 5 to 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

1-8 

develop timelines of the costs and benefits of the RBAC project, and 

we used these timelines to estimate the return to NIST’s investment. 

This step captures NIST’s impact on the timing of RBAC 

development and the speed and extent of its diffusion. 
2-1 

 The Evolution 2 of RBAC 

RBAC has emerged as a viable alternative to traditional access 

control policies, such as DAC and MAC, because it is based on an 

enterprise’s organizational structure. As such, systems, data, and 

applications administrators and owners can more effectively 

manage and maintain information resources in a manner consistent 

with enterprise-wide security policies. RBAC has the further benefit 

of facilitating systems administration by assigning roles to manage 

users as opposed to using each individual user’s identity to manage 

users. 

Although role-based security models have existed for 20 years, their 

application has until recently been limited. To date, most systems 

have based access control on the discretion of the owner or 

administrator of the data as opposed to basing access on 

organizational or policy needs as is done with RBAC. These 

owner-controlled systems worked adequately for small local area 

networks (LAN) but have become cumbersome to manage and error 

prone as networking capabilities have increased. The explosion of 

electronic data exchange and interconnection of information 

systems led to significant productivity gains in the 1990s. 

However, these same factors have also increased electronic security 

and integrity concerns. Confidentiality restriction and regulatory 

requirements have caused organizations to look for improved 

approaches to manage the types of users that may have access to 

which data and to which applications. The result is a renewed and 

growing interest in role-based security models. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-2 

Several organizations, including NIST, have been working since the 

early 1990s to define a common standard for RBAC and to spur its 

implementation by providing research and development support to 

this emerging technology. Although relatively few software 

companies currently market RBAC and RBAC-enabled products, the 

market for these products is expected to grow rapidly in the near 

future. 

This section provides background information needed to 

understand RBAC in the context of the marketplace, including 

RBAC’s benefits and the barriers to its adoption. The following 

issues are discussed: 

Z technical characteristics and underlying concepts of RBAC, 

including a comparison of RBAC to defender access control 

models; 

Z benefits of RBAC, particularly those related to administering 

computer networks, both within an organization and its 

extranet; 

Z RBAC industry supply chain, including information on the 

software developers who supply RBAC-enabled software 

and the characteristics of end users who purchase this 

software; 

Z barriers software developers face when developing and 

integrating RBAC models into their products; 

Z barriers software end users face in implementing RBAC; and 

Z NIST’s contribution to the development and deployment of 

RBAC and the mitigation of market barriers. 

 2.1 RBAC TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Access control is generally concerned with determining what users 

and groups of users can perform what operations on what 

resources. The fundamental problem is that each system and 

application for which access control is enforced has a proprietary 

method for creating and managing users, groups, and a systemspecific meaning of operations and objects. For many 

organizations, the number of systems can be in the hundreds or 

even thousands, the number of users can range from the hundreds 

to the hundreds of thousands, and the number of resources that 

must be protected can easily exceed a million. 

How does RBAC help? RBAC is designed to centrally manage 

privileges by providing layers of abstractions that are mapped one-
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-3 

to-many to real users and real operations and real resources. 

Managing permissions in terms of the abstractions reduces 

complexity and provides visualization and a context for 

implementing complex access control policies. Abstractions can be 

centrally managed resulting in real permissions on real systems. 

In taking advantage of these abstractions RBAC offers greater 

administrative efficiency as well as the ability to intuitively 

administer and enforce a wide range of access control policies. In 

RBAC, permissions are associated with roles, and users are made 

members of roles, thereby acquiring the role’s permissions. The 

implementation of this basic concept has been shown to greatly 

simplify access control management. Roles are centrally created 

for the various job functions in an organization, and users are 

assigned roles based on their responsibilities and qualifications. As 

such, users can be easily reassigned from one role to another. 

Users can be granted new permissions as new applications and 

systems are incorporated, and permissions can be revoked from 

roles as needed. For example, if a user moves to a new function 

within the organization, the user can simply be assigned to the new 

role and removed from the old one, whereas in the absence of 

RBAC, the user’s old privileges would have to be individually 

located, revoked, and new privileges would have to be granted. 

To provide further administrative efficiency, RBAC allows roles to 

inherit other roles and as such form role hierarchies. For example, 

the role “cardiologist” is hierarchically superior to the role 

“doctor,” if the cardiologist has (inherits) all of the privileges of the 

doctor, and the users that are authorized for the “cardiologist” role 

are also authorized for the “doctor” role. 

RBAC provides the capability to visualize and manage user 

privileges across heterogonous platforms and applications. By 

centrally storing and managing roles as both collections of users 

and collections of privileges, RBAC is able to define, constrain, 

review, and enforce access control policies as user/role, role/role, 

or role/privilege relations. RBAC is considered to be policy-neutral 

in the sense that, by using role hierarchies and constraints, a wide 

range of security policies can be expressed to include traditional 

DAC as well as a variety of nondiscretionary separation of duty 

(SOD) policies through the definition of constraints. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-4 

This remainder of section provides more details on the interaction 

among roles, users, and permissions. It also discusses the RBAC 

models that have been developed and compares them to alternative 

access control models, such as access control lists and MAC. 

 2.1.1 Users, Roles, and Permissions 

Traditionally, the prevalent approach to granting access to 

information within a particular database or access to a particular 

application is to establish specific permissions for each user within 

an organization. If the user must have access to multiple 

applications and databases, the user must be assigned permissions 

for each resource. This approach is problematic for several 

reasons. When users enter, leave, or change responsibilities within 

an organization, updating the permissions of each user is difficult, 

time consuming, and possibly error-prone (Barkley and Cincotta, 

1998). In addition, this approach leads to potential violations of 

information and system security. RBAC avoids these problems 

because it uses the user’s role as the key to access rather than the 

user’s identification (see Figure 2-1). 

Figure 2-1. Role-Based Access Control 

Roles

Role 1

Role 2

Role 3

Individuals Resources

Server 1

Server 2

Server 3
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-5 

In a role-based model, each user may be assigned to multiple roles, 

and each role may have multiple users. The roles that users are 

assigned depend on their job responsibilities, and each role is 

assigned permissions. Permissions determine the data and 

applications that may be accessed and each role is assigned the set 

of permissions that are necessary for the user to perform his 

required tasks. Users’ roles can pertain to specific jobs (bank teller, 

bank manager), geographic locations (New York, Chicago), or 

individual descriptors (trainee, shift supervisor). In most situations, 

users within the organization change more frequently than the roles 

or job functions within the organization. By associating roles with 

permissions and changing the users within the roles, administrative 

expenses decrease. If an organization experiences a significant 

amount of worker turnover relative to role turnover, RBAC can 

provide significant cost savings (Ferraiolo and Kuhn, 1992). 

Least Privilege 

Roles improve security within a network by using the principle of 

least privilege. When a role is created within an organization, the 

user’s level of access to information needs to be determined. Least 

privilege means that once access requirements are determined, that 

role should only be given permissions to accomplish the required 

tasks; no additional permissions should be given. In networks 

without role-based policies, users often have access permissions 

exceeding what is necessary. Where job responsibilities overlap 

job categories, administrators may be unable to limit access to 

sensitive information. RBAC improves security within the network 

because it prevents users from having access to information outside 

of their roles. This denial of access prevents users from 

circumventing the security policy within the network. 

Separation of Duties 

Within a larger task that the organization must accomplish, several 

subtasks may need to be performed. Because the subtasks may be 

separated into different roles, it is extremely difficult for a single 

individual to engage in fraud against the organization. The most 

common example of separation of duties is the separate subtasks 

involved in authorizing a payment for a particular transaction. By 

separating submission for payment and authorization for payment 

into separate roles, no individual can accomplish both tasks. This 

In most situations, 

users within the 

organization change 

more frequently 

than the roles or job 

functions within the 

organization. By 

associating roles 

with permissions 

and changing the 

users within the 

roles, administrative 

expenses are 

decreased. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-6 

mutually exclusive separation reduces the possibility of fraud 

within the organization. The specific separation of duties depends 

on the nature of the tasks and subtasks that the firm must 

accomplish. In some cases, the complete separation of tasks 

(submission and authorization) may be too difficult. Thus, the 

security advantage is outweighed by the additional transactions cost 

of accomplishing the task. In these cases, a more dynamic 

separation of duties could occur where the permissions within the 

role allow for submission and authorization. However, the same 

user cannot submit and authorize the same payment. A crosscheck of user and role within the same task could be added to the 

system to accomplish the desired task (Ferraiolo and Kuhn, 1992). 

 2.1.2 RBAC Models and Evolution 

The benefit of using roles to manage permissions is not a new 

concept, but the actual use of roles in network administration 

policy is new. A consensus has yet to emerge within the computer 

network and security community on what RBAC means, although 

role-based security models have been in existence for nearly 20 

years. As a result, the spectrum of RBAC definitions includes 

models that range from the simple to the sophisticated. Sandhu 

(1998) and Sandhu et al. (1997) analyze the various definitions of 

RBAC. They define the basic RBAC model, referred to as RBAC0, 

as including least privileges and separation of duties. Subsequent 

RBAC models build on this basic model, introducing new concepts 

of hierarchies and constraints that enhance administrative and 

security benefits (see Figure 2-2). 

Models Hierarchies Constraints 

RBAC0 No No 

RBAC1 Yes No 

RBAC2 No Yes 

RBAC3 Yes Yes 

Note: All RBAC models include hierarchies and constraints. 

Figure 2-2. RBAC 

Definitions 

As RBAC models have 

progressed, they have 

incorporated additional 

functionality. 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-7 

RBAC1

RBAC1 is based on RBAC0 and introduces the concept of role 

hierarchies. Role hierarchies are a natural extension of the 

authority and responsibility roles that exist within an organization. 

For example, an organization may have junior and senior roles. 

When role hierarchies are introduced, the senior role (e.g., bank 

president) has access to all of the information that the junior role 

(e.g., bank teller) has access to, but not vice versa. 

This approach can increase the administrative efficiency of the 

network. Rather than respecifying all of the permissions of the 

junior role for the senior role, the junior role is specified as a 

permission of the senior role. As the levels of the organization or 

the numbers of permissions increase, the greater the benefit from 

establishing role hierarchies. 

RBAC2

RBAC2 is also based on the original RBAC0 model but introduces 

the concept of constraints. The most frequent use of constraints is 

to achieve separation of duties within an organization. For 

example, a constraint can state that if a user has a particular role, 

that user cannot be assigned a separate role. However, constraints 

can also be used in many other situations. Constraints can be used 

to establish membership to a particular role. If an organization 

wants to have only one department head, then it can impose a 

particular constraint stating that if someone is in a particular role, 

then no one else can be admitted to that role. This concept has 

been referred to as cardinality. Constraints can also be used as 

prerequisites for entry into roles. For example, the only way that 

role x can be assigned to a user is if the user is already in role y. 

RBAC3

The NIST RBAC model is RBAC3. It is the most complex RBAC 

model, including both role hierarchies and constraints. In RBAC3, 

constraints can be imposed on the hierarchical roles within an 

organization. For example, junior roles can be constrained to have 

a maximum number of senior roles, multiple junior roles can be 

constrained to have different senior roles, or constraints can be 

imposed on users to limit the number of senior roles to which they 

can be assigned. The sensitive interactions that occur between role 

Interviews with software 

developers indicate that 

RBAC2 and RBAC3 models 

are not widely adopted in 

software products. The 

concensus is that although 

these models are likely to 

be adopted at some point 

in the future, the cost of 

their incorporation at 

present outweighs the 

additional product benefits. 

The additional functionality 

associated with these two 

RBAC models can be built 

into RBAC0 and RBAC1

through the role 

engineering process. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-8 

hierarchies and constraints in RBAC3 make it the most sophisticated 

and complex RBAC model. 

 2.1.3 Alternative Access Control Technologies 

In addition to role-based models, several competing technologies 

are used to address these needs. Whereas RBAC determines access 

to data based on organizational policy or needs, alternative models 

base access control on the discretion of the owner or administrator 

of the data. Under all alternative models, an end-user’s identity 

determines which access permissions are needed. 

This section describes the other three predominant access control 

models: 

Z access control lists (ACLs), 

Z DAC, and 

Z MAC. 

Figure 2-3 compares RBAC to other access control technologies. 

Access Control Lists 

One of the most common access control models is the use of ACLs. 

When using ACLs, every piece of data, database, or application has 

a list of users associated with it who are allowed access. In this 

system, it is very easy for the security administrator to see which 

users have access to which data and applications. Changing access 

to the piece of information is straightforward; an administrator 

simply adds or deletes a user from the ACL. 

Each set of data or application has its own ACL, but there may or 

may not be a corresponding list that gives the network 

administrator information on all of the pieces of information to 

which a particular user has access. Only by examining each piece 

of data individually and checking for access can the security 

administrator find any potential security violations. If all accesses 

by a particular user need to be revoked, the administrator must 

examine each ACL, one by one, and remove the user from each list. 

When a user takes on different responsibilities within the 

organization, the problem gets worse. Rather than simply 

eliminating the user from every ACL, the network administrator 

must determine which permissions need to be eliminated, left in 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-9 

Figure 2-3. Alternative Access Control Technologies 

RBAC offers a more efficient method for assigning users access permissions than alternative access control models. 

Individuals Resources

b) Discretionary Access Control Using

Access Control Lists

Server 1

Server 2

Server 3

Roles

a) Role-Based Access Control

Role 1

Role 2

Role 3

Individuals Resources

Server 1

Server 2

Server 3

c) Mandatory Access Control

Individuals Resources

"Top Secret"

"Secret"

"Classified"
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-10 

place, or altered. Network administrators have made several 

attempts to improve ACLs. In some cases, users can be put into 

groups, making it easier to change the ACL. In other cases, 

elaborate rules can be applied to ACLs to limit access to particular 

pieces of data. 

Discretionary Access Control 

The main concept of DAC is that the individual who owns the data 

is able to control access to the data. ACLs are regarded as one 

implementation of DAC. DAC governs access to information based 

on the user’s identity and rules that specify which users have access 

to which pieces of information. Whereas ACLs are lists that specify 

which users can access a particular piece of data, DAC consists of a 

set of rules that specify which users are allowed to access the data. 

When a user requests access to a particular piece of data, the server 

searches for a rule that specifies which users are allowed to access 

the information. If the rule is found, the user is given access; if not, 

the user is denied. For example, a rule may state that users from a 

certain group are not allowed to read a particular data file. 

Rule-based DAC is an improvement over ACLs, but it is still 

susceptible to human error and therefore suffers from potential 

security violations. DAC does not impose any restrictions on data 

access for a particular user. Once users can access data, they can 

change or pass that information onto any other user without the 

security administrator’s knowledge (Sandhu and Samarati, 1994). 

Mandatory Access Control 

MAC is a departure from other access control mechanisms because 

it is based on hierarchical security labels and assigns each user and 

each piece of information or application a particular security level 

(e.g., classified, secret, top secret). Two common principles are 

then applied to determine if a user has access to a particular piece 

of information: read down access and write up access. 

Read down access gives users the ability to access any piece of 

information that is at or below their own security level. If a user 

has a secret security level, they are able to access secret and 

classified material but not top secret material. Write up access 

states that a subject’s clearance must be dominated by the security 

level of the data or information generated. For example, someone 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-11 

with a secret clearance can only write things that are secret or top 

secret. With these two access control principles, information can 

only flow across security levels or up security levels. 

 2.2 BENEFITS OF RBAC 

Using roles to determine and manage access permissions allows 

system administrators to better incorporate least privilege and 

separation of duties into administrative policies. As discussed, 

RBAC exists in many forms, but even its simplest form is an 

improvement over alternative methods. “RBAC features such as 

policy neutrality, principle of least privilege, and ease of 

management make [RBAC models] especially suitable 

candidates...Such models can express both DAC and MAC policies, 

as well as user-specific policies. In essence, RBAC models can 

provide generic framework for expressing diverse security 

requirements” (Joshi et al., 2001a). 

In this section, we discuss the types of benefits associated with 

using RBAC rather than another method. Key benefits are 

Z simplified systems administration, 

Z enhanced organizational productivity, 

Z reduction in new employee downtime, 

Z enhanced systems security and integrity, and 

Z simplified regulatory compliance. 

 2.2.1 Simplified Systems Administration 

Once an RBAC system is established, the costs associated with 

administering and monitoring the network are less than those 

associated with alternative access control models. Several factors 

influence the magnitude of the cost decrease. First, the greater 

employee turnover, and in turn the number of people changing 

roles, the greater the cost savings of RBAC relative to other access 

control systems. Second, some firms or organizations are very 

dynamic, and user roles and permissions change quickly. In these 

environments, RBAC is more efficient in moving users in and out of 

given roles and changing the permissions of given roles than 

competing access control systems. This improved efficiency is 

observable in the decrease in labor hours that the computer 

network support team spends on administrative tasks. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-12 

In addition to reducing system administration costs, the automated 

access control systems supported by RBAC reduce the burden on 

upper management. In alternative access control systems, upper 

management is integrally involved in determining individual 

privileges and authorizing access for each new employee. RBAC’s 

organizational structure supports the automation of this process.1

Several issues must be weighed when granting access permissions. 

Security administrators need to balance the 

Z complexity of the position being assigned privileges, 

Z complexity of the organization, 

Z security level required, 

Z data and application needs of the position, and 

Z organizational issues. 

By assigning a predetermined role to the user, the labor expense of 

assigning permissions is significantly reduced, thus freeing labor 

resources for other tasks. 

RBAC is a scalable model, meaning that the model can work as 

well in large environments covering several offices and classes of 

users as it can in one-office environments. Roles matching job 

positions may be determined in a central office, but the actual 

assigning of roles to or changing of roles for new employees can 

occur at each branch office by an administrator. This concept, 

frequently referred to as delegated administration, can be of 

particular benefit to organizations with several branch, subsidiary, 

or contractor locations, such as health care plans, insurance 

companies, banks, and similar organizations (see Figure 2-4). 

 2.2.2 Enhanced Organizational Productivity 

RBAC also has the potential to enhance the system by which firms 

and organizations structure their information systems. Because of 

the greater flexibility and breadth of network design associated with 

RBAC, the model can be adapted to mirror the organizational 

structure. This creates the potential for new and innovative ways of 

structuring the organization, altering the routing of information, or 

changing the organization’s production processes. Organizations 

 

1Industry experts indicated that automation was possible with alternative access 

control methods; however, the concept of roles greatly enhanced the benefits 

associated with automation. 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-13 

Figure 2-4. An Example of Delegation Administration 

An enterprise can distribute the burden of maintaining access permissions by creating administrative roles for its 

constituent organizations and locations, thereby reducing turnaround times and enhancing productivity. 

Enterprise

Location A Location B Location C

Administrative

Role

User 6

Role A Role B

User 1

User 2

User 3

User 4

User 5

Administrative

Role

User 9

Role A Role B

User 7

User 8

Role A Role C Role D

User 10 User 13

User 11

User 12

Administrative

Role

User 14

Source: Courtesy of OpenNetwork Technologies, Inc. 

can benefit from the consistency in infrastructure across divisions or 

units within the same entity. Additionally, improved business 

standards may result in cost savings. The synergistic improvements 

that may occur within a company could have potentially large 

impacts on employee productivity. 

 2.2.3 Reduction in New Employee Downtime 

RBAC accelerates bringing new employees to full productivity. 

New employees are employees that are new to the organization or 

are existing employees that are placed in a new position within the 

company. During this time period, new employees may only be 

marginally or partially productive. RBAC can reduce the time for 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-14 

establishing access, and the RBAC structure enables the automation 

of establishing and verifying access. 

 2.2.4 Enhanced Systems Security and Integrity 

Role-based access models offer improved security and audit trails 

over alternative methods. RBAC is able to reduce the impact from 

security violations in two ways. First, RBAC can decrease the 

likelihood that a security violation occurs. Second, if a security 

violation occurs, RBAC can limit the damage from the violation. 

Roles limit the possibility of internal security breaches from 

individuals who should not have access to the data and 

applications associated with each function. Furthermore, because 

privileges are not assigned manually, it is less likely that the 

security administrator will make an error and inadvertently grant a 

user access to information or applications to which he or she would 

otherwise be prohibited. 

Additionally, productivity may increase from RBAC’s improved 

security of network resources and increased information access. As 

a result, companies may increase their confidence in their 

computer systems and be able to increase the sharing of resources, 

being less concerned about potential security violations. 

 2.2.5 Simplified Regulatory Compliance 

In an age of increasing electronic integration, data security and 

integrity have become political and economic issues. Incidences of 

breaches in data security are well documented, as is the sharing of 

personal information among companies trying to find a stronger 

foothold in today’s highly competitive markets. 

To protect the confidentiality of both individuals and their personally 

identifiable information, recent federal laws have included provisions 

that dictate the type and the extent to which individuals’ information 

can be shared both within an organization and with others. These 

laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability 

Act (HIPAA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) of 1999, 

require data managers to securely maintain and limit the distribution 

of data. To comply, companies are required to use access control 

policies that will safeguard data. RBAC is one such policy that may 

be best suited for this purpose. This section discusses recent Acts and 

the way RBAC supports compliance. 

Several risk factors are 

inherent in the new mode 

of conducting business. 

“Contract employees and 

outsourced business 

functions expose critical 

systems and data to staff 

that have not been 

screened, or that may be 

subjected to uncontrolled 

turnover...current security 

administration systems 

cannot handle the 

increased complexity 

induced by these 

environments” (Byrnes, 

1997). 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-15 

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability 

Act 

HIPAA is a health care reform initiative enacted in 1996 to add a 

dimension of portability to workers’ health insurance as they 

transition between states of employment. HIPAA also contains 

privacy provisions that apply to health information created or 

maintained by health care providers who engage in certain 

electronic transactions, such as health plans, and health care 

clearinghouses. To meet privacy compliance obligations, entities 

must maintain secure information systems that have the 

functionality to prevent the willful or unintentional disclosure of 

any individual’s health records and or personal information to 

unauthorized parties. 

RBAC facilitates HIPAA compliance by providing an access control 

structure that permits only people in certain roles to access certain 

types of information, such as patients’ medical records. For 

example, a health care provider may assign a contracting physician 

a certain role that allows the doctor access to medical records, but 

office staff in charge of billing and administrative tasks may be 

assigned another role that permits access to claims information but 

not medical records. 

Although HIPAA does not explicitly mention any given access control 

model in the final rule, its implementer, the Department of Health 

and Human Services (DHHS), specifically espouses RBAC as a 

security model to safeguard health data. In fact, DHHS’s Health Care 

Financing Administration (HCFA) refers queries about role-based 

access to NIST publications and the NIST web site in its “General 

Questions” section about HIPAA. Responding to one question about 

role-based access, HCFA writes “please review Chapter 17—’Logical 

Access Control’ of NIST SP 800-12, ‘An Introduction to Computer 

Security: The NIST Handbook’” (HCFA, 2001). 

Figure 2-5 is a simplified example of how RBAC can be used to 

comply with HIPPA from the perspective of the health care 

organization (HCO). Using an RBAC system, the HCO can limit 

which users can access which types of data. For example, a billing 

clerk at a doctor’s office may access a patient’s contact and billing 

information but not her medical history. A doctor, on the other 

hand, has full access to the patient’s medical history. 

Although HIPAA 

does not explicitly 

mention any given 

access control 

model in the final 

rule, its 

implementer, the 

Department of 

Health and Human 

Services (DHHS), 

specifically 

espouses RBAC as a 

security model to 

safeguard health 

data. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-16 

Figure 2-5. Heath Care Industry Example of Using RBAC to Control Access to Sensitive 

Information 

Organizations in the health care industry can leverage RBAC to meet HIPAA requirements by allowing only users in 

select roles to access particular data. 

Health Care Plan Organization

Users Roles Roles Users

PCP, Allergist

OB/GYN

RNs,

Attendants

ADMIN

Pharmacist

DOCTOR

NURSE

PHARMACIST

Personal Contact Information

 Name  Address

 DOB  Number

 Age  Employer

PATIENT INFO DB

EMPLOYER INFO

Billing & Accounts Information

 Payment history

 Copay information

Medical History

 Ailments  Family history

 Medications  Allergies









EMPLOYER

PATIENTS

Employer

HR Benefits

Coordinators

Policy

Holders/

Subscribers





Other Acts 

In addition to HIPAA, several other Acts were enacted in the late 

1990s that include extensive provisions concerning the privacy of 

consumers’ personal information. These include the GLBA of 1999 

and the Telecommunications Act (Telecom Act) of 1996. The 

GLBA eliminates the barriers between banking, investment banking, 

and insurance activities and companies dating from the Depressionera Glass-Steagall Act. Similarly, the Telecom Act, intended to 

increase and allow competition in telecommunications, allows 

communications business to enter any market and to compete 

against each other. 

Although the main goal of both the GLBA and the Telecom Act is to 

increase competition in previously tightly regulated markets, the 

new provisions for the protection of consumer information 

generated some of the most interest (Ledig, 2000). Both Acts 

specify the manner in which personal data can be exchanged 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-17 

among companies and among divisions of companies. They also 

lay out which information must be held in confidence and which 

may be distributed in aggregate form, if at all. The GLBA goes 

further than the Telecom Act by giving consumers the authority to 

block the exchange of any information concerning themselves or 

their accounts among or within companies except as concerns the 

maintenance of their accounts. Although neither Act indicates or 

explicitly requires an access control method, RBAC is one way 

through which companies can restrict which classes of information 

may be viewed by certain types of users. 

 2.3 RBAC-ENABLED PRODUCT SUPPLY CHAIN 

Several software companies produce RBAC and RBAC-enabled 

software. These products range from commercially available offthe-shelf to custom-designed software. The majority of 

commercially available products are designed to manage access 

permissions to information resources within an enterprise’s 

networked environments, such as local-area or wide-area networks, 

referred to collectively as the intranet environment. However, a 

significant growth area in the near future will be for RBAC products 

managing Internet-accessible systems, also referred to as extranets. 

Most of the examples in this report approach RBAC from the 

perspective of its use in the intranet environment. However, 

neither RBAC’s application and technical characteristics nor its 

benefits or costs differ by environment. There is little difference in 

the technology or methodology of defining and creating roles and 

incorporating applications between the intranet and the Internet 

environments. 

RBAC via the Internet supports and enhances business activities by 

more efficiently connecting end users to Internet-based 

applications. Although Internet-based applications would have 

existed with or without RBAC, RBAC decreases the administration 

and maintenance costs of these applications and enhances their 

security (Joshi et al., 2001b). To deliver these applications over the 

Internet, different classes of end users, such as customers or 

contractors, may be assigned roles to maintain or verify their own 

accounts, reducing the administrative load on the firm. Once these 

end users have enrolled, they may be able to register and maintain 

Although Internetbased applications 

would have existed 

with or without 

RBAC, RBAC 

decreases the 

administration and 

maintenance costs 

of these applications 

and enhances their 

security. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-18 

account information, alter their product or service packages, submit 

requests or questions, and settle payments. In such a large 

computing environment, it may be desirable to have users register 

and maintain their own accounts. 

It should be stated here that RBAC’s application is not limited to 

managing permissions in networked environments. Individual 

databases or applications may also have an RBAC system. 

Although the economic benefits of RBAC are hypothesized to be 

concentrated in RBAC’s use in networked environments, RBAC will 

also be used to manage access to any form of information resource, 

including data sets, applications, or other systems. An enterprise 

does not need to have an RBAC policy mapped to its organizational 

structure in these instances, but a policy that is naturally mapped 

against that particular resource’s user structure. Even in such a 

focused application, the owner of that resource accrues both the 

benefits and costs of RBAC. 

 2.3.1 Software Developers 

Software developers design, program, and market systems and 

applications software to manage user access. These software 

packages may or may not have the ability to control user access 

using roles. Those that do are said to be RBAC-enabled or have 

RBAC functionality. Software that is RBAC-enabled has a module 

or administrative tool feature that allows an administrator to create 

and restrict access to roles. Some software vendors offer an 

optional RBAC module that can be integrated with their customers’ 

software suites. Presently, most software systems with RBAC 

functionality are systems software. 

At the time this study was completed, relatively few software 

developers had RBAC-enabled products commercially available. 

However, software developers forecast that the market for such 

products will increase significantly, driven by information security 

and privacy concerns. Table 2-1 lists some firms that currently 

market RBAC and RBAC-enabled software. These firms’ software 

products fall into several categories, including security 

management, electronic commerce infrastructure and platforms, 

operating systems, and access control, with most products 

belonging to more than one category. 
Section 2 — The Evolution of RBAC 

2-19 

Table 2-1. Sampling of Software Developers Currently Offering RBAC and RBAC-Enabled 

Products 

Several software developers currently offer RBAC and RBAC-enabled products. The list below is representative of firms 

that offer package solutions. It should be noted that other types of firms not listed here, including computer consulting 

firms, may offer custom-designed solutions. Some end users also design RBAC systems in-house. 

Access360, Inc. RSA Security, Inc. 

Adexa, Inc. Secure Computing Corp. 

BEA Systems, Inc. Siemens AG 

Cisco Systems, Inc. SETA Corp. 

Entrust, Inc. Sun Microsytems, Inc. 

Entrust Information Security Corp. Sybase, Inc. 

International Business Machines Corp. Symantec Corp. 

Internet Security Systems, Inc. Systor AG 

iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions Tivoli Systems, Inc. 

Microsoft Corp. Vignette Corp. 

Network Associates, Inc. Baltimore Technologies, Inc. 

OpenNetwork Technologies, Inc. BMC Software, Inc. 

Oracle Corp. Novell Corp. 

PGP Security, Inc Radiant Logic, Inc. 

Protegrity, Inc. 

 2.3.2 End Users 

RBAC can be used in almost any sector that uses a computer 

network to limit user access to particular pieces of information. But 

RBAC is most likely to be of significant benefit to organizations 

with many employees and/or multiple locations. The following 

sectors are likely to have the highest RBAC adoption rates: 

Z banking, 

Z health care, 

Z government agencies, 

Z telecommunications, 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

2-20 

Z computer applications security, and 

Z military. 

A recent report by SETA Corporation (1996) for NIST points out that 

certain characteristics within specific firms or sectors magnify the 

benefits from RBAC. These characteristics include, but are not 

limited to, 

Z User Characteristics 

X a large number of users 

X few security administrators 

X high turnover rate 

X large number of data objects 

Z Data Characteristics 

X stable set of applications 

X little change of roles within firm 

X job-dependent access to information 

X stable organizational structure 

Z Organizational Characteristics 

X the organization owns the data and applications 

X the organization controls data and application access 

X user accountability is required within the organization 

X reassessment of the access control policy occurs within 

the organization 
3-1 

 Barriers to RBAC 

 Development and 

 Implementation and 3 NIST’s Contributions 

Two general categories of market failures affect RBAC: barriers to 

the technological development and integration of RBAC into 

software products, and barriers to adoption and implementation of 

RBAC-enabled products by end users. We address the first set of 

barriers, which primarily affect software developers (and in-house 

developers) of RBAC-enabled products and are in large part due to 

RBAC’s generic technology attributes. We discuss RBAC’s 

infratechnology-related market barriers that primarily affect 

adoption and implementation by end users. The section concludes 

with an overview of NIST’s response to these market failures 

through its RBAC project. 

 3.1 BARRIERS TO TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT 

AND INTEGRATION OF RBAC MODELS INTO 

SOFTWARE PRODUCTS 

The barriers to private-sector development and integration of RBAC 

into software products stem from the uncertainty about the success 

and costs of the applied research and product development and the 

difficulties in appropriating returns to their R&D investments. 

These barriers are rooted in the concept of generic technologies, 

which have many of the characteristics of public goods. Generic 

implies that once a base model has been developed it may be 

easily applied in numerous other commercial settings, including 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-2 

other companies appropriating the model for use in competing 

products.1 RBAC is a generic technology for this very reason. The 

development of generic technologies is generally slow because they 

can be applied in numerous settings, industries, or firms. 

Additionally, because once the knowledge is generated and the 

standardization of a technique occurs, appropriating the benefits to 

the innovating entity is difficult. 

Generic technologies are similar to public goods in that they have 

the characteristics of nonrivalry and nonexcludability.2 RBAC is 

nonrival because one firm’s use of RBAC does not affect another 

firm’s use. RBAC is also nonexcludable because one firm cannot 

prevent another firm from using the fundamental concepts of roles 

as the basic technology is advanced. Public goods are typically 

underprovided by private markets as compared to their socially 

optimal levels of provision (Stiglitz, 1988). 

This section discusses the barriers to developing and integrating 

RBAC models in commercial software products that result from 

RBAC’s generic technology characteristics. These barriers include 

the 

Z need for technical expertise outside the software industry’s 

domain, 

Z lack of a consistent definition for RBAC, and 

Z difficulty in appropriating returns to investment. 

The first two factors lead to uncertainty in the success and costs of 

RBAC R&D. The third factor leads to uncertainty in the company’s 

ability to appropriate returns from its RBAC investments. All of 

these factors can delay the availability of RBAC-enabled products. 

When appropriate, we discuss NIST’s role in addressing these 

 

1Although RBAC is an important concept for developing access control systems, it 

should not be considered an infratechnology. Infratechnologies are technical 

tools, including scientific and engineering data, measurement and test methods, 

and practices and techniques, that are widely used in industry (Tassey, 1997). 

RBAC is not an infratechnology because its main effect is to provide a 

technology platform (i.e., a generic technology) rather than leverage the 

efficiency of R&D, production, or market transactions. 

2Public goods, unlike private goods, are characterized by consumption nonrivalry 

and by high costs of exclusion. Rationing of such goods is undesirable because 

the consumption of a public good does not impose costs on society because it 

does not reduce the amount of the good available to others. Further, the costs 

of excluding those who do not pay for the infratechnologies are likely to be 

high because they are typically embodied in products and processes 

(techniques), rather than in products that can be sold. 

“The market will fail to 

provide sufficient 

infrastructure because of 

appropriability and risk 

problems. These are, of 

course, the essential 

problems that cause 

markets to fail more 

generally in R&D activities, 

resulting in 

underinvestment from 

society’s perspective” 

(Scott, 1999). 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-3 

market failures. A more detailed discussion of NIST’s specific 

activities and expenditures is included in Section 3.3. 

 3.1.1 Technical Expertise Outside the Software Industry’s 

Domain 

Although the fundamental concepts of roles are common 

knowledge, the capability to formalize model specifications needed 

to implement RBAC models is beyond the knowledge base of 

existing staff in many software companies. The lack of 

understanding of the programming requirements or a lack of 

awareness of RBAC models makes software companies hesitant to 

commit to RBAC development. 

The lack of knowledge and staff expertise in the area of RBAC 

increases the uncertainty of both the technical feasibility of 

developing successful RBAC-enabled products and the 

development costs and time frame. These uncertainties increase 

the project risk and create significant barriers to investment in new 

RBAC-enabled software products. The risk impacts are further 

magnified by the fact that most business managers (decision 

makers) are risk adverse, weighing potential downsides greater than 

equivalent potential upsides in the probability distribution of 

returns. 

NIST’s RBAC project addresses these market failures by 

demonstrating the technical feasibility of RBAC products through its 

programs. In addition, NIST’s patents, papers, and the conferences 

it has sponsored disseminate the basic RBAC generic technology 

from which private companies can develop market applications. 

 3.1.2 Lack of Consistent Definition 

RBAC is a broad open-ended technology that ranges from very 

simple role structures to complicated hierarchies and constraints. 

As a result, the development of a single model is not appropriate. 

However, the lack of agreement on a set of fundamental concepts 

and underlying terminologies created a barrier to the development 

of RBAC-enabled products in the 1990s. 

As with the development of many new technologies, evolving 

RBAC models have typically used different terminology to describe 

similar concepts and functionalities. The fact that RBAC has 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-4 

simultaneously emerged from many different commercial and 

academic backgrounds has also contributed to the lack of 

consistent definitions and has increased confusion. 

The lack of consistent definitions has slowed the implementation of 

RBAC. As a result, software develops have difficulty leveraging 

publicly available information and consumers of RBAC products 

have difficulty evaluating and comparing different products. The 

development of the NIST model was one of the first attempts at 

presenting industry with a set of consensus RBAC concepts and 

terminology. NIST has followed this model development with a 

proposed standard for RBAC, which was developed in 

collaboration with industry and academics. 

 3.1.3 Difficulty of Appropriating Returns to Investment 

RBAC models are generic technologies that can benefit a wide 

range of industries. It is a technology that will be integrated into a 

variety of products targeted at different market segments. As a 

result, it is difficult for the individual companies in the private 

sector to fully appropriate the returns from their investments in 

RBAC because technology spillovers and imitation are likely to be 

high. For firms to engage in R&D to develop a new technology, 

several conditions need to be in place. One of these is the ability 

to appropriate the market returns that are generated when a new 

technology is introduced into the marketplace. Market returns to 

R&D can take two separate forms: private and social. Private 

returns can be thought of as the profits that individual firms receive 

from selling the new technology—the price per good minus the 

R&D and production costs. Social returns are the benefits that 

accrue to all of the other participants in the market in which the 

technology was implemented or other markets that may benefit 

from using that technology. Jaffe (1996) describes these benefits as 

“spillovers.” For example, when a firm engages in R&D, other 

firms learn what has worked and what has not worked. They can 

than reverse-engineer the process or otherwise gain “knowledge” 

from the activities of the first firm. Because firms cannot fully 

appropriate the spillovers, firms underinvest relative to the socially 

optimal rate. 

However, the existence of market spillovers does not constitute a 

need for government action; other conditions must also be met. If 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-5 

the private return is large, there may be enough of a market 

incentive for the innovating firm to still engage in R&D. 

Additionally, the innovating firm may be be able to capture enough 

of a private return that they would still invest in the technology. 

Jaffe points out that knowledge spillovers are a market failure when 

private returns fail to reach a specific societal hurdle rate when the 

social returns do. In these cases, suboptimal investment is likely to 

occur. 

One way for a company to appropriate the returns from R&D is to 

limit the spread or use of its technical innovations through secrecy, 

patents, or licenses. However, in the case of RBAC, because it is 

embodied as a software product, it is difficult to prevent imitation 

through reverse engineering. Similar, patents and licenses provide 

less protection for software products compared to other areas of 

technology innovation because competing firms are frequently able 

to “invent around” the existing patent, effectively preventing the 

innovating firm from appropriating all of the returns associated with 

an innovation. 

Because of the appropriablity issues discussed above, it is generally 

accepted that government needs to fund research in generic 

technologies to the point where market applications become 

profitable for the private sector (i.e., where the risk-adjusted 

expected rate of return to investment in RBAC products exceeds the 

companies’ internal rate of return criteria) (Scott, 1999). NIST’s 

involvement mitigates market appropriation issues by providing the 

research foundation to which all have access. Firms are then able 

to produce and market products that build on NIST’s research and 

therefore incur only the incremental R&D costs for orienting the 

RBAC applications needs of their current and prospective products 

towards their customer base. This makes investment in RBACenabled products more attractive for the private sector and 

accelerates the availability of commercial RBAC-enabled products. 

A second advantage of this approach by NIST is the limitation of 

users being locked into a specific product or firm. When the 

generic technology is publicly available, software products from 

competing companies are more likely to be interoperable and work 

together in integrated systems. This increases competition and 

lowers barriers to entry in the access control market. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-6 

 3.2 BARRIERS TO IMPLEMENTATION OF RBACENABLED PRODUCTS 

The second category of barriers to developing and adopting RBAC 

is implementation barriers that affect end-user investment 

decisions. These barriers can affect an end-user organization’s 

decision of whether to implement a role-based access policy and 

hence RBAC-enabled products. Many of the tools needed to 

support end users’ adoption of RBAC fall into the category of 

infratechnologies. 

In an ideal scenario, an organization will establish and design 

operations processes and then create an infrastructure that will 

execute those processes, providing to each member only the tools 

needed to perform one’s function (Byrnes, 1997). Information 

systems are designed and built to support the roles that correspond 

to these processes. Each role is assigned a series of permissions 

defined by their position and function within the organization. 

Ideally, the system is clearly defined and agile, making the addition 

of new applications, roles, and employees as efficient as possible. 

According to software developers and end users, however, the ideal 

scenario rarely occurs. Business processes and employee positions, 

both formal and informal, are preexisting and entrenched, impeding 

turn-key implementation of new systems and management 

philosophies. Because RBAC requires roles to be established within 

the workplace, organizations implementing a role-based system 

may need to complement their information access policies with 

their general administration policies. Subsequent realigning of 

workflow and positions, to whatever extent necessary, may be very 

expensive, difficult, and time consuming. 

One software developer noted that 

RBAC [is] a tool that supports a correctly defined 

[administrative] policy....The structure and support model 

of the organization, as defined by that policy, will 

determine the cost savings, if any, should RBAC be 

implemented. Actually, RBAC will cost an organization 

more in the long run if the policy for that organization is not 

realistic in terms of operational requirements for RBAC or 

fails to even define RBAC and its use throughout the 

organization. 

Software end users who 

responded to our Internet 

survey concurred on the 

factors that are important in 

choosing an access control 

technology. These factors 

are 

Z ease of installation and 

management, 

Z level of security 

provided, 

Z ability to cover most 

platforms, 

Z scalability, 

Z ease of use, 

Z costs of 

implementation, and 

Z complexity of 

implementation and 

maintenance. 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-7 

This section discusses the impediments for current and potential 

end users beyond the direct cost of purchasing the software of 

installing RBAC. These impediments are not insurmountable, but 

they do factor into organizations’ business decisions concerning 

adoption. Herein we depart from analyzing RBAC as a software 

component and take the position of a potential end user, focusing 

on the issues that arise during RBAC adoption. Interviews with 

software developers, end users, and technical specialists as well as 

articles in the popular press inform our discussion of 

implementation impediments. These impediments are divided into 

three general categories: role engineering, migration costs, and 

systems structure. 

 3.2.1 Role Engineering 

The process of defining and implementing roles is known as “role 

definition” or “role engineering.” According to the software 

developers interviewed, role engineering can be a contentious and 

time-consuming process, but it is integral to RBAC’s success. One 

developer said a customer’s rollout of RBAC hit a large number of 

glitches precisely because “the overriding problem can be traced 

back to a lack of RBAC support in the organization’s administration 

policy.” 

Role engineering entails defining the roles that will determine 

which employees have access to which data and to which 

applications. Also determined are roles’ relationships to one 

another, role hierarchy, and role constraints. As this process 

progresses, implementers may see benefits in rethinking how work 

is allocated and completed within the organization. Role 

engineering may be the costliest component of implementation 

because, even for an RBAC0 system, defining roles may take 3 to 4 

months according to developers. 

Workflow processes may be realigned as informal access grants are 

formalized and roles defined. Transitioning to a role-based system 

formalizes many relationships within an organization (Byrnes, 

1997). This process may have the added benefit of introducing 

organizational clarity into the workplace. Many organizations grant 

ad-hoc access control as new applications are installed or job 

definitions change. The changeover to a centralized system may 

bring many of those types of issues to bear. 

One developer said 

a customer’s rollout 

of RBAC hit a large 

number of glitches 

precisely because 

“the overriding 

problem can be 

traced back to a 

lack of RBAC 

support in the 

organization’s 

administration 

policy.” 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-8 

It is expected that role-engineering expense will decrease over time 

because of the development of new software tools and increased 

familiarity with the process of defining and assigning roles. Several 

companies have developed or are in the process of developing 

software tools that help to automatically define roles using existing 

patterns of access permissions gleaned from user databases. These 

tools should reduce the labor expense of manually defining and 

creating all roles. Furthermore, as companies and consultants 

become familiar with the implementation process, a learning curve 

effect should emerge. What is not clear, however, is what the total 

impact on role engineering these two developments will have. The 

relative ease or difficulty of the role definition process will depend 

on an entity’s organizational and administrative structure, an 

attribute that varies widely among firms. 

NIST has developed specific tools to assist end users in role 

engineering. The tools include RGP-Admin, a tool for managing 

role/permission relationships, and AccesMgr, a graphical user 

interface for managing access control lists for Windows NT files. 

Through the development of these tools NIST has lowered the cost, 

and hence the barrier, to adopting and implementing RBACenabled systems. 

 3.2.2 Migration Costs 

Any time a new information system is installed, an organization 

will accrue costs. This is especially true if the decision is to 

implement a new access control system. The costs of migrating to 

a role-based system are four fold: salaries and consultants’ fees, 

software purchases and licensing agreements, computing resources 

and infrastructure, and customization costs. These costs may differ 

depending on the scope of the package being installed, the size of 

the firm or the number of licenses, and the migration complexity. 

One of the largest cost components of installing an RBAC system is 

the salaries and benefits of the team tasked with its implementation. 

Tasks include not only the implementation and migration of the 

software system purchased, but also the staff training, software 

package selection, and the customization process. In addition to 

staff labor expenses, consultants may be hired to either implement 

the systems migration completely or to offer their expertise on some 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-9 

component therein. Outside consultants may also be hired to 

customize a prepackaged system or help with role definition. 

In addition to purchasing the software itself, an organization may 

invest in software support services and new systems infrastructure. 

The software agreement may involve a sliding fee scale based on 

the number of licenses purchased and a software maintenance 

agreement. Depending on the package’s system requirements, 

buyers may need to build or enhance their systems’ infrastructure. 

The expense of buying, installing, and maintaining computing 

resources can be high. Costs may rise further if network resources 

must be maintained solely or partly to help migrate from one 

system to another. 

Although NIST has not specifically focused its efforts on how firms 

can migrate from one access control system to RBAC, the migration 

and transaction costs from migration to RBAC have slowed its 

adoption. Future work by NIST in supporting migration from other 

access control systems to RBAC may be valuable. 

 3.2.3 Systems Structure and Interoperability 

If a large firm with access control concerns could choose today an 

access control system to use, most would choose RBAC. However, 

most firms made the decision on how to control access to 

information before RBAC was a candidate. The choice set included 

ACLs, DAC, and MAC. Once the access control system decision 

was made and implemented, networks evolved through time and 

became firm specific. User definitions and permissions were 

created based on the potentially thousands of employees that work 

for a particular firm. Lock-in of the access control system has 

occurred in many firms (Hilchenbach, 1997). The market failure 

associated with this inability to break-out of this problem as slowed 

the adoption of RBAC by users. 

As new systems are installed, administrators may have to rectify 

years of inefficiencies, such as informal access grants, disorganized 

systems, and different organization structures among divisions. The 

move towards disciplined centralized systems often means 

realigning these systems and creating a more cohesive, formal 

systems structure. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-10 

Because of the time and cost involved, it is likely that a large 

organization will adopt RBAC at an incremental pace. By 

spreading out implementation over a period of time or only when 

new applications or systems come online, companies avoid the 

risk-prone full rollout. 

An additional barrier to developing commercial RBAC products is 

the wide range of operating systems that users employ. Even within 

one firm or organization, multiple operating systems are often 

needed. As firm size increases, so does the number of operating 

systems (Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992). As firm size 

increases, the importance of access control also grows (Infosecurity 

Magazine, 1999). Because they combine these effects, larger firms 

need an access control system that is able to operate across 

multiple operating systems. In addition, security features need to 

be effective across sectors of the firm or organization without being 

overly intrusive to the user. This trait is referred to as 

interoperability. Interoperability is the ability to communicate and 

transfer data or information across different activities and platforms. 

For example, an access control system that displays perfect 

interoperability would be able to communicate with the security 

and administrative network across an entire firm without any 

disruptions or complications. 

Without a framework or architecture for addressing interoperability 

problem, firms may be unable to implement RBAC and benefit from 

the reduced administrative costs and improved security. NIST’s 

activities have been influential in remedying these market failures. 

Hilchenbach (1997) agrees, “NIST is a driving force behind the 

move to standardize RBAC.” By developing common standards, 

firms in different industries are now able to implement RBAC across 

the multiple platforms within their organization, and lessen the 

lock-in effect. In addition, the development of common standards 

lays the groundwork for future network externalities across 

companies. Once a common playing field is established, software 

developers and network administrators are able to engage in 

activities that will offer future improvements to RBAC. 

 3.2.4 Product Acceptance and Comparison 

When making purchasing decisions, buyers of software products 

gather information about the various potential products and then 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-11 

make a decision based on the comparison of characteristics across 

products. These comparisons could include cost, quality, 

reliability, and capacity. For this process to be effective, consumers 

must have an understanding of what they are getting from a product 

and producers must be able to prove that they are delivering what 

the consumer wants. 

Prior to NIST’s involvement, no commonly agreed upon definition 

of RBAC existed. Without a definition, firms that were interested in 

either upgrading their existing access control system or purchasing 

new access control systems may have been unable to compare 

attributes across commercial RBAC products. 

Without a set of metrics that consumers are willing to accept as 

standards for a particular piece of technology, software firms are 

unable to prove that their product is reliable in addressing security 

issues and effective at reducing administrative costs. The entire 

industry was lacking a yardstick or common definition. If 

producers and consumers cannot agree on the product they are 

selling, market transactions are unlikely to happen. A study by 

NIST (Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and Lynch, 1992) found that part of the 

reason why RBAC had not been implemented was the lack of a 

“stamp of approval” from a third party. Ferraiolo, Cugini, and Kuhn 

(1995) make this clear by stating “The lack of definition makes it 

difficult for consumers to compare products and for vendors to get 

credit for the effectiveness of their products in addressing known 

security problems.” 

NIST’s work at defining RBAC has addressed this failure by 

engaging in efforts that generate a common yardstick that all 

software developers can use. Specific projects have included 

surveys of security needs and the development of a formal RBAC 

model to demonstrate its effectiveness and reliability. Developing a 

formal RBAC model is a strategy that has proven successful in other 

markets. 

 3.3 NIST RBAC PROJECT ACTIVITIES 

Because RBAC has the characteristics of a generic technology, the 

private sector has been slow to develop it. NIST has responded to 

the market failures discussed above through a portfolio of activities 

promoting RBAC’s development and adoption. These activities are 

Without a set of 

metrics that 

consumers are 

willing to accept as 

standards for a 

particular piece of 

technology, 

software firms are 

unable to prove that 

their product is 

reliable in 

addressing security 

issues and effective 

at reducing 

administrative costs. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-12 

targeted at providing the generic technologies and infratechnologies 

needed by RBAC software developers and end users. NIST’s 

activities have focused on assisting federal agencies in enhancing 

their access control systems and supporting industry in its 

development and implementation of RBAC. 

NIST began work on developing RBAC concepts in 1991. NIST 

developed a technical report recommending the investigation and 

use of RBAC within the U.S. Federal Criteria. This study 

documented the need for federal agency computer networks to 

evolve from DAC and MAC to address new security and access 

issues. NIST’s RBAC work is being conducted via NIST’s Computer 

Security Division and Software Diagnostics and Performance 

Testing. 

NIST published the first complete RBAC model in October 1992. 

This early work reflected the integration of several ongoing projects 

that indirectly contributed to developing the RBAC model. 

Beginning in 1994, NIST began to fund studies specifically targeted 

to demonstrate the viability of NIST’s RBAC concepts, its 

commercial potential, and its application to real-world problems. 

NIST’s major activities in support of RBAC include 

Z producing professional publications, 

Z applying for patents, 

Z sponsoring conferences and workshops, and 

Z establishing and funding development and demonstration 

projects. 

NIST has also contributed to the development of infratechnology 

tools that demonstrate RBAC’s potential to end users and support 

implementation. These tools lower the risk and cost of adoption 

and provide a springboard to launch the new and emerging market 

for RBAC-enabled products. 

 3.3.1 Producing Professional Publications 

Table 1-1 lists many of the professional publications NIST staff have 

authored and co-authored. These publications reflect NIST’s 

pivotal role in the early development stages of RBAC. NIST 

developed the technical specifications and formal description of the 

RBAC model (Ferraiolo and Kuhn, 1992). NIST has since expanded 

the model by incorporating different types of role relationships 

NIST/ITL’s RBAC project 

responded to a 

demonstrated need for 

improved security 

mechanisms and standards 

for administering complex 

networked systems. At that 

time, industry believed that 

a lack of standards was 

hampering the 

development of access 

control products and that a 

key to the success of such a 

system would be its ability 

to operate across a wide 

range of operating systems 

(Ferraiolo, Gilbert, and 

Lynch, 1992). 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-13 

(Kuhn, 1997; Gravila and Barkley, 1998; Barkley and Cincotta, 

1998). 

NIST’s publications were an important mechanism for 

disseminating their research findings to the academic and business 

communities. NIST’s research and subsequent publications 

provided the technology base from which market applications 

could be developed. By leveraging NIST’s basic research, software 

developers were able to lower their development costs and 

accelerate the introduction of RBAC-enabled products. 

 3.3.2 Applying for Patents 

NIST has applied for four patents. They are in the areas of 

Z implementation of role-based access control in multilevel 

secure systems, 

Z workflow management employing role-based access 

control, 

Z a method for visualizing and managing role-based policies 

on identity-based systems, and 

Z implementation of role/group permission association using 

object access type. 

The purpose of NIST’s patents is not to appropriate returns through 

commercialization of licensing agreements but to ensure that its 

research would remain in the public domain and be available for 

all developers of RBAC-enabled products. In this way no individual 

company or small group of companies can dominate the market 

and charge monopoly prices that would slow the penetration of 

RBAC and the realization of its benefits to society. 

 3.3.3 Sponsoring Conferences and Workshops 

NIST has sponsored a number of professional conferences, 

including a series of ACM workshops on RBAC. In addition to the 

workshops and demonstrations, the conferences NIST has 

sponsored have led to the publication of over 100 papers on RBAC 

concepts and implementation procedures. 

These conferences are an important avenue for disseminating 

information on RBAC development. Timely information 

dissemination reduces duplicative research efforts and lowers the 

uncertainty associated with developing and adopting RBACenabled products. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-14 

 3.3.4 Establishing and Funding Development and 

Demonstration Projects 

In addition to NIST’s ongoing research to develop generic RBAC 

technologies, NIST has established and funded studies specifically 

targeted at demonstrating the viability of RBAC concepts and 

developing infratechnology tools to support its implementation. 

Table 3-1 provides an overview of the four main RBAC projects 

sponsored by NIST. 

The tools NIST has developed to assist in implementing RBAC 

through these projects include RGP-Admin, a tool for managing 

role/permission relationships, and AccesMgr, a graphical user 

interface for managing access control lists for Windows NT files. 

Other examples include the development of specific tools for 

implementing RBAC for the World Wide Web (Barkley et al., 

1997). 

In addition, NIST has demonstrated the use of RBAC for the web, 

for corporate intranets (Ferraiolo, Barkley, and Kuhn, 1999), and for 

the health care industry (Barkley, 1995). NIST has also assisted 

with implementing RBAC on the National Security Agency (NSA) 

Synergy secure operating system. 

Through the demonstration of RBAC and the development of tools 

to support its implementation, NIST has accelerated its market 

penetration and lowered the cost of implementation of RBACenabled products. 

 3.4 THE IMPACT OF NIST’S CONTRIBUTIONS 

Figure 3-1 shows the impact of NIST/ITL’s RBAC project on the 

access control model development chain and the pathways to 

benefits attributable to NIST’s activities. NIST’s role in developing 

RBAC has primarily been through supporting software designers 

and implementation companies in developing commercial RBAC 

software products. However, NIST has also been active within the 

academic community and in interactions with end users. 

NIST’s papers and patents have helped to standardize RBAC’s 

terminology and model specifications, which has accelerated 

RBAC’s development as a generic technology. NIST’s workshops 

have helped disseminate information on RBAC to academics, 
Section 3 — Barriers to RBAC Development and Implementation and NIST’s Contributions 

3-15 

Table 3-1. NIST-Sponsored RBAC Projects 

RBAC for Synergy

Project Objective To demonstrate the viability of RBAC concepts and its application to real world 

problems, the first RBAC prototype was developed on the Synergy platform. 

This work was performed through using external research funds. 

Period of Performance Developed during the period of October 1994 to December 1996 

NIST Project 

Expenditures 

Purchased hardware and software: $50,000 

System design and specification, software development and demonstration, and 

publications: $750,000 

RBAC Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) 

Project Objective To promote innovative thinking and investigate the commercial implications of 

RBAC technology, an SBIR topic was developed, selected for funding, and 

awarded to SETA Corporation. 

Period of Performance September 1994 to June 1997 

NIST Project 

Expenditures 

Develop RBAC model and experimentation software: $250,000 

RBAC/Web 

Project Objective To develop an RBAC reference implementation of NIST’s RBAC model and 

demonstrate that the RBAC model applies to networking environment RBAC for 

the WWW. (RBAC/Web) project was established and was funded using NIST 

funding. 

Period of Performance January 1997 to December 1998 

NIST Project 

Expenditures 

Purchased hardware and software: $40,000 

RBAC/Web design and implementation, documentation, APIs, and publications: 

$574,000 

Role Control Center (RCC) 

Project Objective The RCC was implemented based on a provisional patent application that was 

filed in August 1998. The purpose of the project is to implement RCC as a 

Windows NT and Windows 2000 application. 

Period of Performance January 1998 to present 

NIST Project 

Expenditures 

$150,000 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

3-16 

Figure 3-1. Overview of NIST’s Impact 

NIST’s activities have affected all levels of the RBAC supply chain. 

Academics and Other

Research Organizations

• Basic Research

Papers and

Patents

NIST’s Activities RBAC Supply

Chain NIST’s Impacts

Software Developers

• Applied Research

• Product Development

End Users

• Implementation

• Migration from Legacy

System

Conferences and

Workshops

NIST Programs

and “Tools”

Standardization

Accelerates Model

Development

Lowers the Cost and

Accelerates Product

Development

Lowers the Cost and

Accelerates Adoption

software developers, and potential end users. By promoting the 

exchange of information these workshops lowered development 

costs and accelerated the development and adoption of RBACenabled products. Finally, NIST projects demonstrated the 

feasibility of RBAC and provided infratechnology tools to software 

developers and end users. The demonstrations and resulting tools 

lowered the cost and accelerated the development and adoption of 

RBAC-enabled products. 

Section 4 presents a conceptual framework from which the impacts 

of NIST’s activities are formally modeled. The model provides the 

basis for the technical and economic impact metrics that are used 

to collect information and calculate measures of economic return to 

the NIST/RBAC project. 
4-1 

 4 Analysis Framework 

This section presents the modeling approach used to estimate the 

economic impact of NIST/ITL’s RBAC project through its 

contribution to the development and adoption of RBAC and 

RBAC-enabled products and services. The approach provides a 

framework for developing a time series of benefit and costs and 

guides the data collection activities. 

To estimate the economic impacts of NIST/ITL’s RBAC project, we 

needed to develop a time series of benefit and costs for the three 

key segments of the RBAC supply chain. The time series captures 

Z NIST’s expenditures, 

Z software developers’ R&D expenditures with and without 

NIST, and 

Z industry users’ benefits and adoption costs with and without 

NIST. 

The expenditure time series for NIST and software developers was 

straightforward to develop and represents a relatively small share of 

the impacts compared to the industry users’ benefit and adoption 

costs. To estimate RBAC’s impact on industry users (with and 

without NIST), we modeled the representative firm-level benefits of 

RBAC and its adoption rate by industry. In this section we 

summarize the impact hypothesis and cost metrics. The section 

concludes with an overview of the conceptual approach for 

calculating the measures of economic return to NIST/ITL’s RBAC 

project. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-2 

 4.1 MODELING FIRM-LEVEL BENEFITS OF 

COMMERCIAL RBAC PRODUCTS 

To estimate the impact of NIST’s contributions to the development 

and adoption of RBAC and RBAC-enabled products and services, 

we first need to model the flow of benefits and costs associated 

with RBAC systems. Figure 4-1 illustrates the flow of costs and 

benefits from the perspective of an individual company associated 

with installing an RBAC system. These costs and benefits are 

measured relative to the counterfactual of an alternative access 

control system such as an ACL, DAC, or MAC that is already in 

place. Traditional investment theory states that if the net present 

value (NPV) of the flow of benefits is greater than zero, then the 

company will undertake the investment project subject to a budget 

constraint. 

Figure 4-1. Flow of End-User Costs and Benefits 

Net Cash

Flow

Time

Customization

Z

Implementation Operation

Benefits –

Expenditure

Benefits

Costs
Section 4 — Analysis Framework 

4-3 

As shown in Figure 4-1, the life-cycle of an RBAC system for users 

can generally be segmented into three phases: 

Z system customization, 

Z system implementation, and 

Z system operations. 

System customization includes determining which system is best for 

the individual firm, purchasing the system, planning the migration, 

and defining preliminary roles. During this phase an organization 

produces a comprehensive business plan and prepares to roll out 

RBAC in its organization. This phase of the project can involve 

6 months of planning, on average, during which several tasks must 

be accomplished. These tasks include customizing software; 

performing additional programming; developing request and 

approval processes for changes in user assignments; and developing 

a set of roles, role hierarchies, and role restriction/interactions that 

clearly capture the company’s business activities. The organization 

determines what roles need to be created and what information 

needs to be associated with which role. Although role definition 

begins during this phase, it is an iterative process, and roles will 

evolve and be redefined over time. System implementation is a 

two-phase process that involves rolling out the new systems to end 

users and reestablishing user privileges via roles. First, information 

administrators must determine the privileges that each user needs 

based on her job function. Second, they must determine and define 

the role that corresponds to their particular job function. 

Implementation can be the most costly part of the project and 

typically occurs over 6 months. Some benefits of RBAC will be 

realized soon after implementation begins, as employees are 

gradually converted to the RBAC system and as new employees are 

processed using the new system. 

Once fully implemented, the organization using RBAC is said to be 

in the operations phase. At this point, the benefits (relative to 

alternative access control systems) include reduced administrative 

costs, decreased worker downtime as they are assigned new 

privileges, and fewer and less severe security violations. Access 

activities in this phase include moving users in and out of roles and 

defining new roles as needed. Figure 4-1 shows these benefits, Z, 

as a steady flow over time. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-4 

The potential impact of NIST on users’ costs and benefits is shown 

in Figure 4-2. In Figure 4-2, NIST’s contributions have 

(a) reduced customization costs and time: These cost reductions 

are shown by the shaded square area. Time reductions are 

shown as a shift in the curve to the left. 

(b) reduced implementation costs and time: The cost reductions 

are reflected in the nonparallel shift in the implementation 

stage. 

Figure 4-2. Reducing End-User System Customization and Implementation Costs and Time 

Net Cash

Flow

Time

Z

(a)

Reduced

customization

costs

a) Reducing System Design Time and Costs

(b)

Reduced

implementation

costs

Accelerated

benefits

Combined, the two time reductions shift the entire life-cycle curve 

to the left by time “t” resulting in the acceleration of benefits shown 

in the second shaded area.1 Note that the cost and time effects 

presented in Figure 4-2 are not mutually exclusive. Lowering the 

“pull” costs associated with the system customization and 

implementation of RBAC can contribute to the acceleration of 

adoption (not explicitly illustrated in Figure 4-2). It should also be 

noted in Figure 4-2 that the magnitude of the benefit in the 

 

1For simplicity, this discussion ignores the “time value of money” effect due to the 

acceleration of both the costs and benefits. However, as described in Section 

4.4, this factor is accounted for in the actual calculation of impact estimates 

through the appropriate discounting. 
Section 4 — Analysis Framework 

4-5 

operations stage (Z) remains constant. During preliminary 

interviews with industry experts, all agreed that NIST’s 

contributions did not have an impact on the attributes or 

functionality of the final RBAC systems installed. Hence, for data 

collection and impact estimation we assumed that product quality 

remains constant and focused our investigation on cost and 

acceleration impacts. 

 4.2 DIFFUSION OF COMMERCIAL RBAC 

PRODUCTS—INDUSTRY-LEVEL ADOPTION 

Figure 4-3 illustrates the adoption of RBAC systems over time. The 

vertical axis indicates the cumulative share of adoptions through a 

given year, and the horizontal axis is time. Adoptions are measured 

in terms of the percentage of employees within a given industry that 

are being managed using an RBAC system at any given time. 

Figure 4-3. End-User Adoption of RBAC Products and Services 

Number of

Employees

Managed by

RBAC

Systems

Time

With NIST

Without

NIST

X Years

NIST’s Impact

Because adopting an RBAC system is not a discrete event and 

employees are brought on line over time, the penetration of RBAC 

is modeled as a continuous diffusion curve. The S-shaped diffusion 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-6 

curve approaches the full industry potential asymptotically. The 

industry potential reflects the percentage of employees that are 

likely to be managed by RBAC systems once the full set of RBAC 

functionalities is made available to and adopted by industry.2 For 

most industries the long penetration is expected to be close to 100 

percent (i.e., some form of RBAC will be used by virtually all 

companies). For other industries RBAC may not be cost-effective in 

the near future given the current state and cost of technology. 

Forecasting RBAC’s rate of diffusion is difficult because it is in the 

early stages of adoption. It is a function of the number of current 

adopters, the number of potential adopters, and the rate at which 

information and knowledge pass from one agent to another. This 

study forecasts diffusion using an S-shaped logistic curve. This 

model is theoretically consistent with most empirical studies of 

technology adoption (Geroski, 2000; Mahajan and Peterson, 1985; 

Martin et al., 1998). Originally, only a small number of firms adopt 

this technology. As more firms observe the benefits realized by 

initial adopters, they too adopt the technology. 

Forecasts of the diffusion of the technology and the total market 

size vary by industry and are based on interviews with experts in 

the industry. As shown in Figure 4-3, the impact of NIST’s 

contributions on the development of RBAC is shown as accelerating 

overall adoption by X years. Note that our discussions with 

industry experts indicated that NIST has not influenced the quality 

of RBAC, only the timing of adoption. Thus, the total industry 

potential that the curve approaches asymptotically remains 

unchanged. 

As mentioned above, it is likely that adoption rates and NIST’s 

impact on these rates will vary by industry. In addition, it is likely 

that larger companies will adopt early and smaller companies adopt 

later because the benefits that large firms receive will be relatively 

larger. To account for variations in company size over time, we 

focus our empirical estimates on companies with more than 500 

employees. Industry experts said that these large companies are 

where RBAC systems are most likely to be implemented in the near 

 

2This may occur through implementing all of the NIST model features in 

commercial products or the full dissemination of information and tools to 

support in-house development. 
Section 4 — Analysis Framework 

4-7 

future because larger companies realize a higher rate of return to 

their investment. 

 4.3 SUMMARY OF IMPACT HYPOTHESIS AND 

COST METRICS 

Prior to collecting data to quantify the economic impact of 

NIST/ITL’s RBAC project, we developed a series of impact 

hypotheses and cost metrics to be investigated during the interviews 

with industry experts. These impact hypotheses and technical and 

economic metrics are separated into two general categories: 

Z What are the benefits of RBAC relative to the counterfactual 

of alternative access control technologies? 

Z What impact has NIST had on the cost and timing of the 

development and adoption of RBAC and RBAC-enabled 

products and services? 

 4.3.1 The Benefits of RBAC 

The counterfactual for measuring the benefits of RBAC is the use of 

an alternative access control system such as an ACL, DAC, or MAC. 

Table 4-1 lists the specific hypotheses that were investigated along 

with technical and economic impact metrics used to quantify each 

hypothesis. Table 4-1 also provides the unit by which the 

frequency of benefits is determined. We aggregated and 

normalized the benefits listed in Table 4-1 to develop an estimate 

of the average benefit per employee for each industry included in 

the analysis. 

For the administrative and productivity benefit hypothesis, we used 

a “bottom up” estimation approach. For each of these areas, the 

impact is the change in labor time that is then linked to the 

employee’s labor rate ($/hour). 

To evaluate the potential economic impact of RBAC on the 

frequency and severity of security violations, we first asked 

companies what they would be willing to pay to totally eliminate 

security violations; then we asked about the share of violations 

RBAC can potentially eliminate. A “top down” estimation 

approach is more appropriate for investigating security violations 

because of the difficulty in eliciting specific information on the 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-8 

Table 4-1. Benefits of RBAC Relative to Alternative Access Control Technologies 

Hypothesis Impact Metric Cost Metric 

Unit Scaling Factor or 

Weight 

RBAC reduces 

administrative 

processing time 

1. Change in administrative time 

for assigning existing 

privileges to new users 

(minutes) 

Fully loaded 

administrative labor 

rate per hour 

Number of new hires 

per year 

 2. Changing existing users’ 

privileges (minutes) 

Fully loaded 

administrative labor 

rate per hour 

Number of internal job 

changes per year 

 3. Establishing new privileges to 

existing users (minutes) 

Fully loaded 

administrative labor 

rate per hour 

 Number of new job 

functions 

 4. Terminating privileges Fully loaded 

administrative labor 

rate per hour 

Number of employee 

terminations per year 

RBAC increases 

productivity 

1. Decreased downtime for new 

employees (days) 

Percentage loss in 

productivity ×

average hourly new 

employee labor rate 

Number of new hires 

per year 

 2. Reduced time for upper 

management (minutes) 

Fully loaded upper 

management labor 

rate 

Number of new hires 

per year plus internal 

job changes per year 

 3. Enhanced organizational 

structure 

Investigated 

qualitatively 

RBAC reduces the 

frequency and 

severity of security 

violations 

1. Elimination of security 

violations 

Willingness to pay 

for eliminating 

security violation 

Percentage of violations 

that can be eliminated 

by RBAC 

number and cost of security violations from individual companies. 

We found that for a variety of marketing and confidentiality reasons 

companies are reluctant to discuss the frequency or severity of past 

violations. As discussed in Section 5, we relied heavily on 

secondary data to assess the benefits associated with security 

violations. 
Section 4 — Analysis Framework 

4-9 

 4.4 NIST’S IMPACT ON THE DEVELOPMENT AND 

ADOPTION OF RBAC PRODUCTS AND 

SERVICES 

As illustrated in Figure 2-6, preliminary interviews with NIST and 

industry experts indicated three main pathways through which 

NIST’s contributions affect the development and adoption of RBAC 

products and services: 

Z lowering the costs of R&D, including system design and 

software development; 

Z lowering implementation costs, including role definition 

and migration from previous systems; and 

Z accelerating the realization of benefits, described in 

Table 4-1, of RBAC relative to alternative access control 

systems. 

These hypotheses are listed in Table 4-2 along with the technical 

and economic impact metrics. Preliminary discussions with 

industry experts indicated that virtually all the R&D and 

implementation costs are in the form of staff time. Thus, the 

technical and economic impact metrics for the first two hypotheses 

are labor in terms of changes in labor hours and labor expenditures, 

respectively. Changes in R&D expenditures per company were 

averaged and then weighted by the number of software companies 

developing RBAC products and large companies developing inhouse RBAC systems. 

The technical and economic impact metrics for NIST’s acceleration 

effect are the average number of months an adoption decision was 

advanced and the value of the benefits of RBAC realized as a result 

of the acceleration. Benefits were calculated on an annualized 

per-employee basis and then weighted using the shift in the 

diffusion curve as shown in Figure 4-2. 

Finally, it should be noted that preliminary interviews with industry 

experts indicated that NIST’s activities will probably not change the 

long-run “quality” of RBAC products and services, only the cost of 

development and the timing of availability and adoption. Hence 

changes in the magnitude of annual benefits per employee and the 

long-run industry penetration of RBAC systems are not included as 

impact hypotheses attributable to NIST. Industry experts said that 

the attributes and features included in the NIST RBAC model would 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-10 

Table 4-2. NIST’s Impact on Commercial RBAC Products and Services 

Hypothesis Impact Metric Cost/Benefit Metric 

Unit Scaling Factor or 

Weight 

NIST’s activities have 

lowered the private cost 

of developing RBAC 

products and services 

1. Change in R&D labor hours 

for software developers of 

commercial products 

Reduced R&D labor 

expenditures per 

software company 

Number of software 

companies developing 

RBAC products 

 2. Change in R&D labor hours 

for in-house development by 

users 

Reduced R&D labor 

expenditures per inhouse development 

Number of in-house 

implementations by 

users 

NIST’s activities have 

lowered the private cost 

of implementing RBAC 

systems 

1. Reduced implementation 

time and labor effort 

Reduced 

implementation costs 

per employee 

Industry adoption of 

RBAC in terms of 

number of employees 

NIST’s activities have 

accelerated the 

availability adoption of 

RBAC products 

1. Number of months NIST 

accelerated the availability of 

RBAC products (i.e., shift in 

the diffusion curve) 

Realization of 

benefits (and costs) 

per employee 

described in 

Table 4-1 sooner 

Acceleration of the 

number of employees 

in each industry 

managed using RBAC 

 2. Number of months NIST 

accelerated the adoption of 

RBAC products by end users 

(i.e., shift in the diffusion 

curve) 

Realization of 

benefits (and costs) 

per employee 

described in 

Table 4-1 sooner 

Acceleration of the 

number of employees 

in each industry 

managed using RBAC 

Note: Preliminary interviews with industry experts indicted that NIST’s activities have not influenced the “quality” of 

RBAC products and services, only the cost and timing. Hence the size of annual benefits and the overall industry 

penetration of RBAC systems are not included as impact hypotheses. 

have likely been developed by industry in the absence of NIST, 

however at a later time and with greater costs.3 

The exclusion of RBAC “quality” changes attributable to NIST is a 

conservative assumption in that it leads to lower bound estimates of 

the economic impact of NIST’s RBAC project. It is very possible 

that NIST’s contributions to the development and standardization of 

the higher levels of RBAC will accelerate the use of hierarchy and 

constraint features in RBAC products. However, because software 

vendors did not convey this information during our interviews we 

have not included this category in the quantitative impact 

estimates. 

 

3Note that the quality of access control systems in general does change due to 

NIST, reflecting RBAC’s superiority over alternative systems. The improved 

quality of access control systems is captured through NIST’s acceleration effect 

on the development and adoption of RBAC. 
Section 4 — Analysis Framework 

4-11 

The applicability of RBAC and the long-run market penetration of 

RBAC for a given industry are a function of several factors, 

including computer and network technologies, basic characteristics 

of their business operations, and future reductions in hardware 

costs. These findings, gathered from preliminary industry 

interviews, were also investigated as part of the Internet surveys and 

case study discussed in the following sections. The surveys and 

case study confirmed that it is unlikely NIST affected the long-run 

benefits of RBAC. However, several respondents indicated that the 

NIST model has affected the short-run quality of RBAC products 

and services available to industry. This effect is captured in our 

model as part of the acceleration of realized benefits. 

 4.5 CONCEPTUAL APPROACH TO MODELING 

THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF NIST/ITL’S 

RBAC PROJECT 

The empirical model of the economic impact of NIST’s 

contributions is based on the hypotheses presented in Table 4-1 

and Table 4-2. From the impact and cost metrics listed in these 

tables, we calculated individual company-level R&D costs, 

normalized by the number of employees, and per-employee RBAC 

benefits resulting from the NIST/ITL project. These employee-level 

impacts are adjusted for inflation and discounted using a 7 percent 

social discount rate to estimate the net present value (NPV) of 

NIST’s contributions. This is compared to the NPV of NIST’s 

expenditures to estimate the return to the NIST/ITL project. The 

estimation procedure is explained in detail below. 

 4.5.1 Expressing the Net Benefits of RBAC 

We begin by developing equations representing the net benefit of 

RBAC to society (excluding NIST’s expenditures). This includes 

private R&D costs of software developers and users; customization 

and implementation costs by users; and benefits to users from 

reduced administrative processing time, increased productivity, and 

reduced frequency and severity of security violations. 

The benefits of RBAC, as described in Table 4-1, are defined as the 

flow of operating benefits (OB) over time. Benefits are expressed 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-12 

per employee and may vary by industry, i indexes industry, and t 

indexes year: 

 OBit = ACit + PBit + SBit (4.1) 

where 

OBit = operating benefits per employee 

ACit = administrative cost reductions per employee 

PBit = productivity benefits per employee 

SBit = security benefits per employee 

Implementation costs are also expressed as expenditures per 

employee for a given industry: 

ICit = RBAC user customization and implementation costs 

per employee 

Finally, RBAC R&D costs are expressed as average software 

developer R&D expenditures and average in-house R&D 

expenditures over time: 

R&Dsd = total R&D costs for a typical software development 

company for implementing RBAC concepts into 

their products 4

R&Dih = total R&D costs for a typical user for integrating 

RBAC concepts into their in-house systems 

The time series of net benefits (NBt) from RBAC can then be 

calculated by summing across the costs and benefits to software 

developers and users in all industries: 

NBt = R&Dsd * Nsdt + R&Dih * Niht + 

∑

i

(OBit – ICit) * ∆Empit (4.2) 

where 

Nsdt = number of software developers in year t that 

developed an RBAC product 

Nih it = number of users in industry i that developed inhouse RBAC products in year t 

Emp it = number of employees in industry i being managed 

using RBAC systems in year t 

 

4R&D costs are allocated to the initial year of RBAC system development. Industry 

experts indicated that NIST’s impact on the development process typically 

occurred early in the project; hence, any impact on R&D expenditures was 

likely to be realized in the first year. 
Section 4 — Analysis Framework 

4-13 

The net benefits are separated between the one-time development 

and implementation costs versus the continuing operational and 

administrative benefits. Note that the end-user benefits are a 

function of the cumulative number of employees being managed by 

an RBAC systems, whereas the end-user costs represent the 

incremental number of employees brought on to RBAC systems. 

 4.5.2 Modeling the Impact of NIST/ITL’s RBAC Project 

As described in Table 4-2, the potential economic impact of 

NIST/ITL’s RBAC project results from changes in R&D costs, 

changes in implementation costs, and changes in the number of 

employees being managed by RBAC systems over time. This is 

expressed as 

∆R&Dsd = change in R&D costs for software developers 

∆R&Dih = change in R&D costs for users developing inhouse RBAC systems 

∆ICit = change in implementation costs 

∆ Emp it = change in the number of employees being 

managed by RBAC systems 

Rewriting Eq. (4.2) in terms of changes resulting from NIST’s 

contributions yields 

∆NBt = ∆R&Dsd * Nsdt + ∆R&Dih * Niht + 

∑

i

[OBit – (ICit – ∆ICit)] * ∆Empit (4.3)

 4.5.3 Calculating Measures of Economic Return 

We used the timeline of net benefits attributed to NIST and NIST 

expenditures to develop three summary measures of the net benefits 

of the RBAC project: the benefit-cost ratio, the NPV, and the social 

rate of return. 

In the benefit-cost ratio, the numerator is the time series of ∆NBt

(Eq. [4.3]) associated with NIST’s contributions, discounted back to 

1994—the year in which NIST/ITL’s RBAC project was initiated. 

The denominator of the benefit-cost ratio is the time series of 

NIST/ITL RBAC project expenditures in each year (Ct), also 

discounted back to 1994: 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

4-14 

 (B/C) = 

∑

i=0

n B(t+i)

(1+r)i

∑

i=0

n C(t+i)

(1+r)i

 (4.4) 

An inflation-adjusted social rate of discount of 7 percent is used to 

discount benefits and costs over time. 

The NPV of the NIST/ITL RBAC project can be computed as 

 NPV = ∑

i=0

n









 B(t+i  )

(1+r)i

 – Ct+i

(1+r)i . (4.5) 

The social rate of return is the value of r that sets NPV equal to 0 in 

Eq. (4.5). 
5-1 

 Primary Data 5 Collection 

To estimate the net benefits to RBAC described in Section 3 and 

NIST’s contributions to realizing these net benefits, we collected 

primary and secondary data throughout the RBAC supply chain. 

The data collection activities focused on software developers and 

organizations (referred to as end users) that integrate RBAC 

products into their business operations. 

Figure 5-1 provides a conceptual overview of the primary and 

secondary data collection activities undertaken to support this 

study. Primary data collection methods included telephone 

interviews with software developers and end users, an Internet 

survey of end users, and a case study with a mulitproduct insurance 

company. Secondary data sources included the professional 

literature and economic surveys conducted by the federal 

government and research organizations. In this section we discuss 

our data collection methodologies and goals. 

 5.1 RBAC SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS 

RTI conducted a series of detailed interviews with software 

developers to determine the state of the industry vis-à-vis RBAC 

development and deployment in commercially available products. 

The software developer interviews had three goals within this larger 

construct. The first goal was to assess the current state of RBAC 

development and deployment. The second goal was to collect 

information on the R&D costs of integrating RBAC models into 

developing software products. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

5-2 

Figure 5-1. Overview of Data Collection 

Secondary Data Sources

NIST

Software Developers

Software End Users

• NIST research publications

• Conference proceedings

• Patent searches

• Professional and technical

literature

• White papers

• Product literature

• Conference proceedings

• Professional and technical

literature

• Third-party case studies

• Economic censuses

Participants’ Position

in Supply Chain

Primary Data Collection

Methods and Goals

Methods

• Interviews with NIST staff

Data Sought

• NIST expenditures

• Information on NIST’s activities

Methods

• Project consultants’ analyses

• Telephone interviews

Data Sought

• R&D costs

• State of RBAC development

and deployment

• Role of NIST

Methods

• Telephone interviews

• Internet survey

• Case studies

Data Sought

• Benefits of using RBAC

• Implementation process and

costs

The third goal was to determine the effect of NIST’s involvement in 

developing RBAC and products that are RBAC-enabled. Included 

therein was the potential to determine to what extent NIST’s 

involvement in developing RBAC furthered its diffusion. 

As part of our discussion with software developers, we also 

collected information to compare the costs and benefits to end 

users of RBAC with other access control technologies. This 

information supported the development of the end-user surveys. 
Section 5 — Primary Data Collection 

5-3 

 5.1.1 Software Developer Population and Interview 

Methodology 

We conducted detailed telephone interviews with eight software 

developers. We used three information sources to identify 

prospective participants for the developer survey: conference 

proceedings, technical literature, and word of mouth. Several 

professional societies sponsor workshops and conferences on the 

security and audit of information systems. RTI obtained the 

attendance lists and conference proceedings from several recent 

RBAC conferences and workshops. We also searched the 

professional and technical literature for authors of recent articles on 

the subject. Once the actual interviews began, several participants 

suggested that we contact others if the participant was unsure about 

a question or if the participant thought a colleague would be able 

to contribute additional insights to the study. 

The software developers RTI contacted represented both academia 

and private enterprise (see Table 5-1). We did not contact all of the 

individuals for whom we had contact information; rather we 

selected those individuals whose body of work complemented and 

set them apart from the rest of the list. The eight software 

developers that were formally interviewed are among the most 

active in the field, as indicated by their conference attendance, 

number of articles in the professional and technical literature, 

number of corporate white papers authored, and participation in 

formal societies. Interviewees represented professors, systems 

administrators, and product managers as well as both executive and 

technical staff. 

Each interview was conducted over the telephone and lasted 

between 45 and 90 minutes. Participants were provided with a 

copy of the interview guide and a memorandum outlining the 

project’s goals before the actual conversation. If after each initial 

interview further clarification about any particular comments or 

issues raised was needed, we recontacted the interviewee. 

In addition, several developers contacted were unavailable for 

lengthy discussions; however, they did agree to speak briefly over 

the telephone and discuss their development plans and general 

industry trends. Although no quantitative information was 

obtained, these short conversations did confirm the comments and 

insights gathered from the eight formal interviews. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

5-4 

Table 5-1. Interviewed Software Developers’ Background 

The software developers represent a variety of organizations, but they share the common trait of being involved in the 

research and development of RBAC models and products. 

Software Developer Affiliation Background 

Software Developer 1 Corporate Product development manager 

Software Developer 2 Academic University professor 

Software Developer 3 Corporate Product development manager 

Software Developer 4 Academic and corporate Systems administrator and programmer; Ph.D. candidate 

Software Developer 5 Corporate Research and development scientist 

Software Developer 6 Corporate Research and development scientist 

Software Developer 7 Corporate Vice president of product development 

Software Developer 8 Corporate Product development manager 

 5.1.2 Topics Covered in the Software Developer Interviews 

RTI asked software developers to reflect on the costs and benefits of 

RBAC, its current and potential market penetration, and NIST’s role 

in development and adoption. The developer questionnaire 

consisted of six sections, each containing a series of short-answer 

and table-format questions. Appendix A contains a copy of the 

survey. The first section asked for some background information on 

the industry and size of the firm. The remaining sections asked 

about the following: 

Z Market Penetration of RBAC: The questionnaire began by 

asking developers some basic questions about their 

company’s software products and/or research interests and 

their customers. 

Z Future Technology Improvements: This section asked about 

the how future improvements in both role-based and 

nonrole-based access models might change those 

technologies in the future and to what extent. 

Z Software Development: Developers were also asked about 

their timeframe for incorporating RBAC into their products 

and their research and development costs. They were also 

asked whether articles in the professional literature 

facilitated RBAC’s inclusion. 

Z NIST’s Contributions to the Development of RBAC: 

Developers were asked to what extent, if any, NIST’s 

research into RBAC influenced the research and 

development of their products and the market for role-based 

products. 
Section 5 — Primary Data Collection 

5-5 

The survey instrument contained in Appendix A was used primarily 

as a discussion guide. It was shared with respondents prior to the 

interviews and served as the general structure for the discussions. 

However, in many cases it was the unanticipated information and 

comments obtained during the interviews that proved most 

insightful. 

 5.2 RBAC SOFTWARE END USERS 

RTI conducted an Internet survey of security administrators sent to 

subscribers of Information Security Magazine, a leading trade 

publication for information and systems security administrators. 

Ninety-two administrators responded to the survey. The Internet 

survey’s goals were 

Z to determine the administrative costs of establishing and 

changing user profiles when RBAC or other access control 

technologies are used; 

Z to determine the frequency of security violations, both 

internal and external, when RBAC and other access control 

technologies are used; and 

Z to determine the difficulty of altering or changing access 

control systems. 

We also conducted telephone interviews with one major 

telecommunications firm and a large commercial bank. Although 

these interviews yielded little quantitative data, they were integral 

to understanding the benefits and implementation costs of RBAC. 

The information gathered from these interviews helped define the 

benefits and costs categories in Section 2. 

 5.2.1 Internet Survey Population and Methodology 

We sent an e-mail message on December 19, 2000, to 9,530 of the 

magazine’s subscribers to tell them about the survey and request 

their participation. The e-mail message was targeted to magazine 

subscribers who indicated they were responsible for network and 

systems security administration. It directed the recipient towards 

the RTI web page that housed the survey. 

Ninety-two individual companies responded to the e-mail and 

completed some portion of the Internet survey. Although the 

overall response rate is low, this response rate is consistent with 

previous studies using this database of subscribers. Respondents 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

5-6 

were given the option to skip questions they did not wish to 

answer. 

Because the magazine’s subscriber base is not limited to any 

particular industry, we anticipated that companies that responded 

to the survey would represent an array of industries. One-third of 

the companies were in the information technology industry, a 

category that includes software and information consulting firms as 

well as hardware manufacturers (see Table 5-2). The end-user 

discussion included in Section 2 indicates that key implementers of 

RBAC are likely to include financial institutions and health care 

organizations. These two industries make up the second and third 

largest industry categories, a further indication that RBAC has 

generated a significant amount of interest in these areas. 

Industry 

Percentage of 

Respondents 

Informationa 42% 

Finance and insurance 20% 

Health care and social assistance 14% 

Government 9% 

Educational, professional, scientific, and 

technical services 

5% 

Manufacturing 4% 

Utilities 3% 

Transportation and warehousing 3% 

Total 100% 

aIncludes telecommunications. 

 5.2.2 Topics Covered in the Internet Survey 

The Internet survey asked systems administrators to reflect on the 

access control policies and procedures used within their respective 

companies’ corporate information systems and intranet. The survey 

consisted of six sections, each containing short-answer and tableformat questions. Appendix B contains a copy of the survey. The 

first section asked for some background information on the industry 

and size of the firm. Other sections asked about the following: 

Table 5-2. End-User 

Internet Survey 

Respondents by Industry 

Information services accounted 

for over one-third of 

respondents, with finance and 

health care organizations 

accounting for approximately 

another third. 
Section 5 — Primary Data Collection 

5-7 

Z Access Control Technologies Used by Your Firm: The first 

portion of the survey asked about the respondents’ current 

and previous access control technologies and products. 

Z RBAC System Design: If companies had designed their 

systems in-house, they were asked about development time, 

costs, and whether they were successful. Companies that 

purchase RBAC systems were asked whether they were 

aware of RBAC before the purchase and why they chose not 

to design a system in-house. 

Z RBAC System Implementation: In this section, 

administrators answered questions related to the amount of 

time it took to implement the system, the number of 

employees managed using the system, and if other costs 

were incurred to support the migration. 

Z The Benefits and Costs of Maintaining RBAC Systems: This 

section asked for labor-hour estimates for a series of systems 

administration tasks and for comparisons between RBAC 

and non-RBAC technologies. 

 5.3 A CASE STUDY OF AN RBAC END USER 

To complete our overview of the state of RBAC in the marketplace, 

RTI conducted an end-user case study. The case study more deeply 

explores the impact RBAC has on organizations that use it. The 

case study differs from the Internet survey of systems administrators 

by focusing on systems migration and operations transitions. RTI 

identified those individuals who are involved in both the 

management decisions related to RBAC and the systems migration 

and integration process. Before the interview, each contact was 

provided with background information on the project and NIST and 

a list of discussion topics. RTI held conference calls and later 

followed up with one or two short emails and phone calls. A 

discussion of each case study follows in Section 5. 
6-1 

 RBAC Case Study: 

 Multiline Insurance 6 Company 

As part of the data collection process, RTI conducted a case study 

of a company implementing RBAC. One of the primary goals of the 

case study was to learn more detail about the RBAC 

implementation process than can be gathered in one 30- to 45-

minute telephone interview. The case study was also an 

opportunity to more fully explore the benefits and costs of RBAC 

from the vantage point of a software end user. 

RTI conducted the case study with a multiline insurance company 

(herein referred to as “the Company”). RTI selected the Company 

for the case study for two principal reasons. First, the Company is 

implementing RBAC to manage both its employees’ access 

permissions and its extranet users’ permissions. The case study was 

able to capture, with one software end user, insights from 

implementing RBAC in these two environments. Second, because 

the Company’s extranet users are contracting agencies, the case 

study would also capture insights related to delegated 

administration and other functionalities afforded RBAC users. 

This section discusses the Company’s line of business and how the 

Company intends to leverage RBAC to enrich its business model 

and improve employee productivity. The installation and 

implementation will cost the Company an estimated $783,636 over 

the course of 12 to 18 months. Once fully implemented, however, 

RTI estimates that the annual administrative and productivity 

estimates will total nearly $661,330. In addition, the Company 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

6-2 

estimates that its RBAC-enabled e-business strategy will increase its 

annual amount of new business by 10 to 20 percent. 

 6.1 RBAC IMPLEMENTATION BACKGROUND 

The Company’s primary line of business is the provision of an array 

of insurance products, including home, auto, business, and life 

insurance. Like many multiline insurers, the Company does not sell 

directly to policyholders, but it instead teams with locally operated 

independent insurance agents. These local insurance agents market 

and sell products within their area, contracting with the Company 

upon selling a policy. The Company’s annual revenues are 

measured in the billions, it has several thousand employees, and it 

works with hundreds of agencies located across the U.S. 

The Company is in the middle of rolling out RBAC to its internal 

and external user population; the rollout is occurring in two stages. 

First, the Company is providing electronic services to its customer 

base, the local insurance agencies, via the Internet. The system will 

use RBAC to provide systems security and to relieve maintenance 

and administrative pressures by delegating administration. As this 

process nears completion, the Company will devote more resources 

to its internal migration from identity-based ACLs to RBAC. 

The Company expects that using RBAC will increase productivity 

and increase its amount of new business annually. RBAC will also 

provide the level of security required by an institution with a large 

number of users and a wide variety of user types, including 

potentially competing insurance agents. The Company was not 

able to provide any quantitative information concerning security 

benefits; however, it openly discussed the other benefits it expected 

to accrue and costs it expected to incur. These costs and benefits, 

quantified by RTI, are presented in Table 6-1. 

 6.2 BENEFITS OF USING RBAC TO MANAGE 

EXTRANET USERS 

The Company’s client base consists of hundreds of independent 

insurance agencies located across the U.S., each employing 

approximately three agents and their support personnel. 

Traditionally, insurance agents interacted with the Company 

The Company 

expects that using 

RBAC will increase 

productivity and 

increase its amount 

of new business 

annually. RBAC 

will also provide the 

level of security 

required by an 

institution with a 

large number of 

users and a wide 

variety of user types, 

including potentially 

competing 

insurance agents. 
Section 6 — RBAC Case Study: Multiline Insurance Company 

6-3 

Table 6-1. Summary of the Company’s Costs and Estimated Benefits 

The Company’s strategy should save it at least $661,330 annually, but to reap these benefits it must first outlay $783,636 

in labor, software, and hardware expenses. 

Variable Dollar Value Economic Metric 

Enhanced organizational productivity $471,040 Reduced paper- and telephone-based workload for 

insurance claims and policy-processing professionals. 

Delegated administration of extranet 

user accounts 

$161,086 Avoided cost of corporate systems administrators 

maintaining extranet users’ accounts. 

Reduction in new employee downtime Undisclosed Reduction in the amount of time an employee is without 

access permissions. 

Improved management of employees’ 

permissions using RBAC 

$29,204 The cost difference between RBAC and non-RBAC 

policies to manager employees’ user accounts. 

Total Annual Benefits $661,330 

Software expenses $120,000 Software purchases, including maintenance and support 

agreements. 

Hardware expenses $20,000 Hardware purchases to support systems migration and ebusiness strategy. 

Consulting fees $24,000 Fees paid to consultants to assist in the implementation 

process. 

Labor expenses $608,088 Labor expenses of employees tasked with implementing 

RBAC systems and e-business strategy. 

Role engineering expenses $14,548 Labor expenses related to determining the characteristics 

of roles to be used. 

Total One-time Costs $783,636 

through telephone calls and written communication. Agents 

contact the Company directly to determine rates, receive quotes, 

and obtain other information. After receiving information from the 

Company, agents then recontact prospective policyholders to 

inform them of the results. The process of contacting the Company 

directly to determine rates and to gather other information 

translated into a significant amount of time between a customer’s 

inquiry and the sale of the policy. If the customer should choose to 

purchase the policy, the agent must then initiate a process whereby 

the policy is enacted and the appropriate forms were filed at the 

agency and mailed to the Company. The Company would 

supplement its records with information obtained from agents in the 

additional mailings and other communications. The process of 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

6-4 

completely selling a policy, including mailing and final data entry, 

could take as long as 4 to 6 weeks. 

RBAC is the technology enabling the Company’s strategic ebusiness initiative. The RBAC software will grant or deny access to 

users to data and applications as users’ roles dictate. In essence, 

the software is the platform to which data and applications will be 

linked. Agents will interact with the Company over the Internet. 

Agents will be assigned roles that allow them to enter policyholder 

information, examine rates, and sell products instantly to 

customers. The goal is to allow agents to maintain, access, 

determine, and interact with policy information and details 

electronically. The Company also estimates that the ability to 

instantly register and sell products to prospective policyholders will 

increase its amount of new business by 10 to 20 percent annually. 

The Company could have selected an alternative access control 

model, but it would have been more costly, although the extent of 

the additional cost is unknown. What is known, however, is that a 

non-RBAC solution would have entailed a larger programming 

component, which would have increased installation and 

customization costs. The system would also have been far more 

costly to operate and less secure for several reasons related to 

systems administration and maintenance, such as user directory 

maintenance and user account maintenance (i.e., no delegated 

administration). 

 6.2.1 Simplifying Systems Administration and Maintenance 

The company will use RBAC’s delegated administration capability 

to establish an administrator at each agency who will be tasked 

with performing the basic systems administration and role 

maintenance for its agency. It will take the Company less than 1 

hour per agency to establish administrators and set up the basic 

structure, a cost that is included in the labor cost estimates 

presented in Section 6.4. Delegated administration of the 

Company’s agents is expected to decrease the systems 

administrator’s workload by approximately 1.5 full-time employees 

annually, compared to using an alternative access control model. 

The Internet survey uncovered that the average, fully loaded wage 

of systems administrators performing these functions is 

Delegated 

administration of the 

Company’s agents is 

expected to 

decrease the 

systems 

administrator’s 

workload by 

approximately 1.5 

fulltime employees 

annually, compared 

to using an 

alternative access 

control model. 
Section 6 — RBAC Case Study: Multiline Insurance Company 

6-5 

approximately $51.62 per hour.1 At this wage, the Company 

would save $161,086 annually. 

Delegated administration does not push costs further down the 

supply chain, rather there may be benefits to those organizations to 

which account administration has been delegated. For example, 

the cost of having the office manager at a local insurance agency 

assign a role to a new agent may be outweighed by the benefit of 

that agent having his or her permissions quickly. If the office 

manager does not have to arrange account set-up and 

administration with the Company, he or she avoids the labor and 

lag time expenses. The agent is also able to assume his or her 

regular duties. 

 6.2.2 Enhancing Organizational Productivity 

Policy and policyholder information is transmitted to the Company 

securely over the Internet, reducing the Company’s administrative 

and data entry burden as well as the amount of paper circulating 

among its departments. The Company currently employs 40 people 

tasked solely to maintain the communication and data entry 

associated with managing relationships with agents in the 

mailroom, call center, support, and data entry departments. It 

estimated that the new initiative will make available about 20 

percent of their time. Based on information gathered from the 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean national loaded wage for 

insurance claims and policy processing clerks is estimated to be 

$29.44 per hour.2 The e-business strategy should free up 16,000 

person-hours annually, given its current level of employment. The 

value of those hours is therefore at least $471,040. 

 

1According to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for network and 

computer systems administrators is $25.81 per hour, or $53,685 annually. This 

estimate was multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer 

for employee benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance 

and 401(k) contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs. 

2According to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for insurance claims 

and policy processing clerks is $14.72 per hour, or $30,618 annually. This 

number was multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer 

for employee benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance 

and 401(k) contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

6-6 

 6.3 BENEFITS OF USING RBAC TO MANAGE 

EMPLOYEES (INTRANET USERS) 

The Company is replacing its current, identity-based access control 

system with a role-based one. The Company employs a few 

thousand people at several offices. IT systems administrators at the 

headquarters facility currently maintain each employee’s access 

permissions using ACLs. The Company estimates that once it 

implements RBAC its principal benefits will fall into two categories: 

reduced new employee downtime and simplified systems 

administration and maintenance. 

 6.3.1 Reduction in New Employee Downtime 

The administrative benefits of allowing a new employee to quickly 

assume his or her duties by having access permissions more quickly 

are potentially substantial. Being a large insurer, the Company has 

scores of employees in similar job functions. With RBAC, it can 

create and define a role once and then assign that role to new 

employees as opposed to adding the employee’s user ID to each 

ACL. The Company indicated that the time until a new employee is 

fully enabled is currently 2 to 3 days, including the routing of 

paperwork. The role-based system and accompanying 

administrative policies are expected to reduce the amount of time 

significantly; therefore, the employee is able to access data and 

applications more quickly. 

Because information on employee turnover and employment at the 

Company is confidential, we do not present the impact estimates. 

However, if we assume that the amount of downtime is reduced by 

one-half, and that during that time the employee is 85 percent 

productive, we can estimate what the approximate benefits are. 

For a new policy-processing clerk, the reduction in new employee 

downtime would be worth $44.16.3 This number is excluded from 

the total benefits calculation for the Company case study because it 

is meant solely to illustrate the benefit. 

 

3The reduction in downtime (50% of 2.5days = 1.25 days = 10 hour) is multiplied 

by the loaded wage rate for policy-processing clerks ($29.44 per hour) and the 

productivity loss (15%). 
Section 6 — RBAC Case Study: Multiline Insurance Company 

6-7 

 6.3.2 Simplified Systems Administration and Maintenance 

As explained in Section 2, the Company expects that the ability to 

more quickly assign access privileges will reduce its systems 

administration and maintenance costs. The time that otherwise 

would have been spent determining and assigning privileges will be 

free for other tasks. Alternatively adjusting or terminating privileges 

for employees that are either leaving the company or moving to 

new positions internally will be equally facilitated. The aggregate 

effect is an improvement in administrators’ productivity. It is 

estimated that using RBAC rather than identity-based ACLs to 

manage user permissions will save the Company $29,204 

annually.4

 6.4 RBAC IMPLEMENTATION COSTS 

The migration to RBAC and the implementation of the e-business 

strategy will cost the Company approximately $784,000. The labor 

costs associated with installation as well as the software and 

hardware costs are one-time costs. The Company will 

intermittently incur role engineering costs as its business activities 

warrant redefining roles over the life of the system. The Company’s 

total user population is expected to be 10,000; thus, the 

implementation cost per user will be approximately $78.36. 

 6.4.1 Software and Hardware Expenses 

The Company’s costs included software and hardware purchases, 

consulting fees, and labor expenses. The access control software, 

which complements the e-business platform and other software, 

cost the company $120,000, including a 1-year maintenance and 

support agreement. The Company also hired consultants to assist in 

the implementation at a cost of $24,000. It purchased two 

additional servers to facilitate the migration and to support the ebusiness initiative at a total cost of $20,000. Thus, the Company’s 

total software and hardware outlay totaled $164,000. 

 

4Results from the Internet allowed RTI to calculate the number of minutes 

administrators save by using RBAC rather than other access control models. 

The Internet survey also yielded data concerning the average number of times 

administrative tasks such as assigning and terminating permissions were 

performed annually. Using these national averages, we were able to estimate 

the impact to the Company. Section 6 more fully discusses the time-savings 

estimates and administrative activities estimates. 

It is estimated that 

using RBAC rather 

than identity-based 

ACLs to manage 

user permissions 

will save the 

Company $29,204 

annually. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

6-8 

 6.4.2 Systems Administrators’ Labor Expenses 

Three computer systems managers are tasked full time to 

accomplish both the e-business and RBAC rollout to independent 

agencies and the internal RBAC rollout. These systems managers 

anticipate that the entire process will take between 12 and 18 

months. Included in these costs are several tasks such as 

Z software customization, 

Z programming related to web-enabling applications, 

Z software and hardware installation, 

Z training and education, 

Z defining roles within the software package, and 

Z all other labor activities related to the software rollout. 

Using data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we estimated 

the loaded wage rate of computer and information systems 

managers to be $77.96 per hour.5 The midpoint of the Company’s 

time horizon and the number of administrators tasked yield an 

estimated labor expense of $608,088. 

 6.4.3 Role Engineering Expenses 

The final labor activity to be included is role engineering. The 

Company has yet to complete the role engineering process and is 

unsure of the amount of time, and therefore the expense, it will take 

to complete the task. The Company anticipates that several more 

meetings in the coming months will be required to determine and 

establish administrative policies and roles and to work out 

organizational issues. Role engineering is an iterative process and 

the Company will most likely revisit role definitions established 

during initial rollout. 

 

5According to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for computer and 

information systems managers is $38.98 per hour, or $81,078 annually. This 

number was multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer 

for employee benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance 

and 401(k) contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs. 
Section 6 — RBAC Case Study: Multiline Insurance Company 

6-9 

The role engineering cost is also a recurring cost as the Company 

grows and its organizational structure shifts. New tools and 

experience with role engineering should make the process less 

costly in the future. However, it is impossible to hypothesize how 

the Company’s future business environment may affect the need to 

redefine the roles established during the rollout. For this case study 

we assumed that role engineering is a one-time cost and that the 

organizational structure of the Company is fixed. 

At the time the interviews were conducted, the Company had held 

40 hours of meetings, each with an average of five individuals 

consisting equally of general managers and computer and 

information systems managers. The loaded wage rate of computer 

and information systems managers is estimated to be $72.74.6 

Using the wage rates for these two groups of employees, we 

calculate the cost of these meetings to be $14,548. 

 6.5 TIME SERIES OF BENEFITS AND COSTS 

The RBAC software and model will be in place indefinitely. 

Because of the significant capital and labor expense of 

implementing access control policies and products, it is unlikely 

that the Company will migrate to an alternative model in the 

foreseeable future. It may deepen or adjust the model it has 

chosen, which may include further labor and capital investment for 

software revisions or the creation of new roles or redefinition of 

existing ones. At present the Company has no plans to deepen or 

adjust its model once RBAC has been fully deployed. 

Table 6-2 presents a time series of the Company’s estimated costs 

and benefits, based on its current expenditure plans. The time 

series assumes that real wage rates are constant and that the 

Company’s organizational structure remains fixed. All dollars are 

2001 dollars. 

 

6According to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for general and 

operations managers is $33.76 per hour, or $70,220 annually. This number 

was multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer for 

employee benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance 

and 401(k) contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs.. 

The role engineering 

cost is also a 

recurring cost, 

particularly as the 

Company grows and 

its organizational 

structure shifts. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

6-10 

Table 6-2. Time Series of the Company’s Costs and Benefits 

The Company’s costs are spread over six quarters encompassing three calendar years. Because some employees will be 

managed using RBAC while others are being migrated to the new system, costs and benefits overlap. The total estimated 

annual benefit to the Company is not first accrued until 2003. 

Year Costs Benefits 

2000 $164,000 

2001 $501,018 $159,857 

2002 $121,618 $659,505 

2003 $661,330 

2004 $661,330 

2005 $661,330 

2006 $661,330 

Expenses are distributed over a six-quarter period. The Company 

purchased the hardware and RBAC software during the final quarter 

of 2000. The time series assumes the Company began 

implementation at the start of the first quarter of 2001 and 

completed it 15 months later at the end of the first quarter of 2002. 

Hence, there was a one-quarter lag between software and hardware 

purchases and the beginning of implementation. The role 

engineering process was completed before users were migrated to 

the new system; therefore, the implementation labor expense is 

distributed evenly over the 5-quarter period, but the role 

engineering expense was limited to the first two quarters. 

The Company plans to first bring its extranet users into the system 

and then its employees. The entire process will take 9 months; 

during 3 months both extranet users and employees will be 

migrated. The process began in the third quarter of 2001 and will 

be completed at the end of the first quarter of 2002. Although 

some benefits will be accrued in 2001, the total estimated annual 

benefit does not begin to accrue until 2003. 

Figure 6-1 illustrates the net benefits to the Company on a quarterly 

basis. Although the software and hardware costs were incurred 

solely during the fourth quarter of 2000, Figure 6-1 conceptualizes 

these particular costs over the entire 2000 calendar year. This 

adjustment was made because the labor costs were distributed 
Section 6 — RBAC Case Study: Multiline Insurance Company 

6-11 

Figure 6-1. Quarterly Flow of Net Benefits 

This figure conceptually illustrates the flow of the Company’s net benefits on a quarterly basis from implementation to 

full operation. 

Net Cash

Flow

Time

$116,196

2000

Q1

2000

Q2

2000

Q3

2000

Q4

2001

Q1

2001

Q2

2001

Q4

2002

Q1

2002

Q2

2002

Q3

2002

Q4

–$80,000

–$60,000

–$40,000

–$20,000

$0

$20,000

$40,000

$60,000

$80,000

$100,000

$120,000

$140,000

2001

Q3

evenly over time, when in reality some months may have seen 

more labor activity than others. If the software and hardware costs 

had been depicted as a spike in net cash flows, the resulting data 

point would have made the curve’s cost area difficult to illustrate 

and understand. 
7-1 

 Survey Findings and 

 Estimation of 7 Impact Metrics 

This section summarizes the findings from the data collection 

activities in terms of the impact metrics and benefit equations 

defined in the Section 3. These metrics will be used to develop the 

time series of changes in benefits and costs resulting from NIST’s 

activities presented in the following section. 

The Internet survey, telephone interviews, and end-user case study 

yielded a large amount of quantitative data on the benefits and 

costs of developing, implementing, and using RBAC and RBACenabled products and services from both the software developer 

and end-user perspectives. In this section we discuss 

Z quantified end-user benefit and cost metrics, 

Z R&D costs associated with developing RBAC products and 

services, 

Z the current and projected diffusion of RBAC and RBACenabled products, and 

Z NIST’s impact on the development and adoption of RBAC. 

 7.1 QUANTIFIED END-USER BENEFIT AND COST 

METRICS 

We used the metrics described in Table 3-1 (repeated in Table 7-1 

for convenience) to estimate the benefits of RBAC to end users. In 

addition to benefits, we estimated the costs borne by end-user 

companies associated with customization and implementation. We 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-2 

Table 7-1. End-User Benefits of RBAC 

Hypothesis Impact Metric 

RBAC reduces administrative 1. Change in administrative time for processing a new employee (minutes) 

processing time 2. Change in administrative time to revise privileges for job reassignment 

(minutes) 

 3. Change in administrative time to terminate privileges (minutes) 

RBAC increases productivity 1. Decreased downtime for new employees 

 2. Reduced time for upper management 

 3. Enhanced organizational structure 

RBAC reduces the frequency 

and severity of security 

violations 

1. Elimination of security violations 

then normalize the average end-user benefits and costs by company 

employment so they could be weighted by industry employment to 

estimate national impacts. 

 7.1.1 End-User Benefits 

The Internet survey provided most of the information used to 

estimate metrics related to systems administration benefits. Based 

on the survey results, RBAC is found to reduce the amount of time 

needed to perform several administrative activities, relative to 

alternative access control models. We also calculated benefits for 

employee downtime based on survey results. These estimates are 

discussed below. 

However, although respondents also indicated that RBAC could 

generate organizational productivity, reduce upper management 

costs, and afford the security benefits, we had only sporadic 

information necessary to estimate these benefits. As a result these 

benefit categories are not included in our quantitative results and 

impact estimates. 

Three realities hindered the collection of quantitative data on 

RBAC’s impact on organizational productivity, upper management 

cost, and systems security and integrity: 

Z First, most enterprises have unique organizational structures 

and business models and practices, even among firms in 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-3 

similar industries. Thus, drawing and developing 

comparisons across firms based on hypothetical scenarios 

regarding the impact an administrative tool may have on a 

firm’s business practices is difficult. Impacts vary widely by 

firm, and most firms are unable to estimate impacts without 

any real world experience. 

Z Second, firms, and indeed individuals within firms, have 

different definitions of what constitutes a business event. 

For example, Internet survey respondents were able to 

evaluate the amount of time needed to terminate and assign 

user permissions for a given access control technology, but 

they may have been unable to evaluate systems security 

violations. A security violation for one firm may be when a 

user attempts to access information to which that user does 

not have access. For another firm, a security violation may 

occur when an unauthorized user accesses and affects a 

system’s integrity. 

Z Finally, firms are hesitant to respond to questions that ask 

about sensitive information on their business operations. 

For these reasons, we were not able to gather sufficient information 

concerning organizational productivity, upper management, and 

security benefits to develop defensible impact estimates. However, 

the case study in Section 5 does detail organizational productivity 

benefit that may be realized by using RBAC systems. In addition, 

several trade magazines have conducted annual reviews of 

information security managers, and key findings from these studies 

are discussed below. 

 7.1.2 RBAC Reduces Administrative Processing Time 

Table 7-2 presents the amount of time required to perform four 

common activities using RBAC and non-RBAC models: 

Z assigning existing privileges to new users, 

Z changing existing users’ privileges, 

Z establishing new privileges for existing users, and 

Z terminating privileges. 

RBAC reduces the amount of time needed to assign privileges to 

new users by 5.5 minutes. RBAC reduces the time required to 

terminate a user’s privileges by nearly 3 minutes. The time needed 

to alter a user’s privileges is reduced by slightly more than 1 minute 

with RBAC. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-4 

Table 7-2. Average Task Time (Minutes) by Access Control System 

Assigning Existing 

Privileges to New 

Users 

Changing Existing 

Users’ Privileges 

Establishing New 

Privileges for 

Existing Users 

Terminating 

Privileges 

RBAC systems 6.9 6.6 8.0 4.7 

Non-RBAC systems 12.4 7.8 9.2 7.6 

Difference 5.5 1.2 1.2 2.9 

These four basic tasks are performed repeatedly every year and 

encompass a large percentage of an organization’s total annual 

number of hours spent on systems administration. Table 7-3 

presents the average number of times survey respondents conduct 

each of the four activities on an annual basis, both in absolute 

terms and per employee. The Internet survey respondents were 

with little exception large firms, each employing thousands of 

employees and maintaining vast information resources and 

networks. Consequently, it was common for one respondent to 

provide activities and time estimates for several different access 

control technologies. 

Table 7-3. Number of Times Administrative Tasks Are Performed 

Administrative Task 

Average Number of Times 

per Year Per Year, Per Employee 

Assigning existing privileges to new users 1,802 1.30 

Changing existing users’ privileges 1,975 1.50 

Establishing new privileges for existing users 1,000 1.06 

Terminating privileges 452 0.22 

It is important to distinguish between new users and new 

employees. New users may be new employees as well as current 

employees that are granted new permissions. Because many firms 

also maintain multiple access control systems and have many users 

with multiple user IDs the number of new users may significantly 

exceed the number of new employees hired annually. As such, the 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-5 

per-employee estimate included in Table 7-3 should not be used to 

approximate employee turnover. 

The per-employee average number of tasks performed allows us to 

estimate the administrative benefits a firm may accrue using RBAC 

when it is coupled with RBAC time-savings estimates and the 

average wage of employees performing the tasks. Using wage 

estimates provided by the Bureau Labor Statistics, this study 

estimates the loaded wage for systems administrators to be $51.62 

per hour.1 

The averages in Tables 7-2 and 7-3 underlie the benefits calculation 

portion of the economic model used to estimate the economic 

impact of RBAC. Based on this information, as shown in Table 7-4, 

an average firm with 100,000 employees could expect to save 

approximately $934,000 a year on systems administration using 

RBAC. Assigning existing privileges to new users accounts for over 

two-thirds of the administrative benefits. 

Table 7-4. Systems Administration Benefit for a Typical Company with 100,000 Employees 

Administrative Task 

RBAC Time 

Savings per Task 

(minutes) 

Average Number 

of Tasks per Year 

Annual Total 

Benefit 

Assigning existing privileges to new users 5.5 130,000 $615,138 

Changing existing users’ privileges 1.2 150,000 $154,860 

Establishing new privileges for existing users 1.2 106,000 $109,434 

Terminating privileges 2.9 22,000 $54,889 

Total $934,321 

 7.1.3 RBAC Increases Productivity 

Section 4 hypothesized that RBAC had three potential productivity 

benefits: reduction in new employee downtime, enhanced 

 

1According to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for network and 

computer systems administrators is $25.81 per hour, or $53,685 annually. This 

estimate was multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer 

for employee benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance 

and 401(k) contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-6 

organizational productivity, and reduced decision-making time for 

upper management. Information to estimate the reduction in new 

employee downtime was provided by telephone and Internet 

survey respondents, and this benefit component is included in the 

quantitative impact estimates. However, respondents were unable 

to provide quantitative data on RBAC’s impact on organizational 

productivity or reduced decision-making time for upper 

management. 

The length of downtime reported by survey respondents for new 

employees or current employees changing positions varied. 

Estimates ranged from 1 to 24 work hours, with most falling 

between 4 and 8 work hours. For current RBAC users and those in 

the process of implementing RBAC, the average employee 

downtime was 4.3 hours. Non-RBAC users experienced an average 

of 8.8 hours in downtime (see Table 7-5). This yields an average 

benefit of RBAC of 4.5 fewer hours of new employee downtime.2 

Metric Non-RBAC System RBAC System 

Maximum downtime value 24.0 8.0 

Minimum downtime value 0.5 0.5 

Average downtime value 8.8 4.3 

However, the term downtime is somewhat misleading. 

Conversations with IT professionals and managers revealed that 

employees are not totally unproductive when they do not have their 

permissions—they are simply less productive. Other activities, 

such as reading printed materials, attending meetings, attending 

orientation, introducing themselves to clients and coworkers, can 

be accomplished without access privileges. Some firms have 

temporary user IDs that new employees are assigned until the 

permanent ID is received. Knowledgeable professionals suggest 

that employees are about 80 to 90 percent productive during this 

 

2The downtime savings estimate is not directly comparable to the RBAC systems 

administration benefits because the downtime estimate represents elapsed 

business hours from the time the new employee starts to the time he receives 

access. Changes in administrative time include paperwork and processing time 

needed to complete the task of actually assigning the permissions within the 

system. The difference between the two is the time the new employee’s request 

sits in the queue waiting to be processed. 

Table 7-5. Reduction in 

New Employee Downtime 

(hours) 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-7 

downtime. Therefore, we assume that new employees are about 

85 percent as productive as they could otherwise be, given they are 

new to the position. 

Table 7-6 shows the downtime reduction benefits of RBAC 

compared to non-RBAC systems. The difference of 4.5 hours, with 

a productivity loss of 15 percent yields a productivity loss of 0.67 

hours. Using the average number of new employees per user in 

Table 7-3, a typical company with 100,000 employees would 

benefit approximately $3.4 million per year. 

Metric Non-RBAC System 

Change in average employee downtime (RBAC 

vs. non-RBAC) 

4.5 hrs 

Productivity loss (15 percent) 0.67 hrs 

Hourly rate $39.46a

New users per employee 1.3 

Annual benefits (100,000 employees) $3,436,966 

aAccording to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for civilian white 

collar workers is $19.73 per hour, or $$41,038 annually. This estimate was 

multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer for employee 

benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance and 401(k) 

contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs. 

 7.1.4 RBAC Reduces the Severity and Frequency of 

Security Violations 

When a security violation occurs, firms and organizations 

experience direct and indirect costs. Depending on the industry 

and the nature of the security violation, the impacts are potentially 

large. In a 2000 Information Security magazine survey, nearly 

2,000 information security managers were asked if they had 

experienced a security violation within the past year from employee 

access abuse, unauthorized access by outsiders, access abuse from 

nonemployee authorized users, or the leakage of proprietary 

information. According to Information Security, 58 percent of the 

respondents reported violations due to employee access abuse, 

42 percent due to unauthorized access by outsiders, 14 percent due 

to access abuse by nonemployee authorized users, and 24 percent 

due to the leakage of proprietary information (Briney, 2000). 

Table 7-6. Benefits from 

Reduced Downtime for a 

Typical Firm with 

100,000 Employees 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-8 

Not only are security violations occurring with frequency, they are 

costly. Table 7-7 presents average cost per violation from the 

Computer Security Institute (2001) located in San Francisco. Theft 

of proprietary information and financial fraud are typically the most 

costly forms of security violation. 

Table 7-7. Average Cost per Security Violation 1999 – 2001 ($thousands) 

Type of Violation 1999 2000 2001 

Theft of proprietary information 1,848 3,033 4,448 

Sabotage 164 970 199 

Telecom 77 66 55 

System penetration 103 245 454 

Insider abuse of net access 94 307 357 

Financial fraud 1,471 1,647 4,421 

Denial of service 116 109 122 

Virus contamination 45 180 244 

Unauthorized access to information by insider 143 1,125 276 

Telecom fraud 27 212 502 

Active wiretapping 20 5,000 0 

Laptop theft 87 59 62 

Source: Computer Security Institute. 2001. “2001 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey.” Computer Security 

Issues and Trends VII(1):Spring. 

With the increasing use of e-commerce, the potential for security 

violations will increase, as may the cost. RBAC systems are 

designed to mitigate the possibility of these violations occurring, 

although this study was unable to predict the extent to which they 

will do so. 

 7.1.5 End-User Customization and Installation Costs 

Customization and installation costs for end users are based 

primarily on the case study. As described in Section 5.4, the 

customization and implementation cost per user less software costs 

is estimated to be approximately $78.36. 

Information from the survey respondents that had implemented or 

were implementing RBAC at the time of the telephone and Internet 

surveys corroborate the detailed estimates from the case study. 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-9 

However, information from the surveys was less detailed and it was 

not always clear what activities were being included in their cost 

estimates. 

A summary of the findings from the Internet study are presented in 

Table 7-8. The details provided by respondents concerning their 

implementation and customization costs varied. Some companies 

fully disclosed the processes they used, whereas others provided 

only general estimates for a few of cost categories. 

Table 7-8. End-User Customization Costs, Evidence from Internet Survey 

Metric Internet Study Value Case Study Value 

Average total amount of time needed to fully 

implement RBAC 

12 months 15 months 

Average time required to migrate user base to RBAC 6 months 6 monthsa

Average customization and implementation costs for 

purchased system, consulting fees 

$100,000 $44,000b

Hardware costs $17,000 $20,000 

Number or full-time employees required 1 to 4 3 

aExcludes staggered rollout of extranet users and internal users. 

bSum of maintenance and support agreement and consulting fees less software costs. 

Most of the survey respondents stated that the process of rolling out 

RBAC took or would take about 1 year, and that the process of 

bringing users online in the RBAC system takes approximately 6 

months. They also indicated that hardware purchases were made 

to facilitate migration and implementation, and that they hired 

consultants, either the software vendor or a third-party 

organization, to assist in implementation. The expense attributable 

to consulting fees averaged approximately $100,000. 

We use the detailed cost per user estimates developed from the 

case study as the basis for typical firm cost in the empirical analysis 

for several reasons: 

Z The case study results give a more complete picture of an 

average firm’s implementation expenses. Many survey 

respondents left out one or more cost categories. It was 

possible to assemble a general impression of costs using 

their responses, but no one response yielded enough 

information to completely calculate costs per user for their 

firms. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-10 

Z Because of the number and depth of the interviews 

conducted with the case study participant, the cost estimate 

from the case study does provide a complete portrayal of 

adoption activities. 

Z Finally, as Table 7-8 indicates, the results from the case 

study closely match those from the Internet survey and enduser interviews. 

Included in the end-user adoption costs are all customization and 

implementation costs with the exception of software expenditures. 

Software expenditures are treated as a transfer payment from end 

users to software developers. The R&D costs of software 

developers are included as a separate cost category and are 

discussed in the following subsection. 

 7.2 R&D COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH DEVELOPING 

RBAC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES 

Organizations conducting research into RBAC and RBAC-enabled 

products and services are for the most part software vendors 

producing commercial packages. However, some software end 

users are also developing or have developed RBAC systems inhouse. 

 7.2.1 Software Vendors’ R&D Costs 

The average R&D cost for software developers to integrate RBAC 

functionality into their products is estimated to be approximately 

$550,000. This average R&D budget was developed from the 

responses software developers provided during the telephone 

interviews and a limited number of Internet survey responses. 

The highest R&D budget reported was $1 million, and the lowest 

$100,000. A company that has incorporated the most advanced 

model of RBAC into its products provided the $1 million estimate. 

The $100,000 estimate reflects a company that incorporated lower 

levels of RBAC functionality. The remaining companies were 

distributed fairly evenly between these upper and lower bounds. 

As a result, the midpoint of the budget range, $550,000, was 

selected for typical R&D costs for software developers. 

At the time this study was completed, approximately 26 software 

companies were known to market RBAC and RBAC-enabled 

products. Other companies are likely in the process of developing 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-11 

RBAC-compatible products, but much of this information is 

proprietary. End users are showing significant interest in RBAC; 

therefore, we anticipate that the number of companies offering 

RBAC and RBAC-enabled products will increase over the next few 

years. 

It is not known with certainty when these companies first began to 

integrate RBAC into their products, but we do know that some of 

their RBAC-enabled products were first on the market in 1997 and 

1998. Most software companies indicated that integrating RBAC 

functionality took up to 1 year. Therefore, our analysis models 

R&D costs beginning in 1996 and with an average of five products 

begin developed each year between 1996 and 2000.3 Based on 

interviews, software developers spent on average $550,000 

developing their RBAC-enabled products. This yields industry 

expenditures of approximately $2.75 million per year. To account 

for enhancement to existing products and firms that will be 

marketing new RBAC products in the future, this R&D rate is 

extrapolated through our time horizon of 2005. 

 7.2.2 In-house End-User Development Costs 

Telephone interviews with end users indicated that few companies 

have developed RBAC products in-house because of the amount of 

labor hours and level of expertise required. Furthermore, it is 

unclear what percentage of end users may be in the process of or 

considering developing an system in-house in the future rather than 

purchase a commercially available solution. For this quantitative 

analysis, we assumed the five large companies per year would be 

developing in-house systems at a cost of $550,000 per system. 

End users that do pursue an in-house strategy will do so because 

their organizational structure, size, and their user structure would 

warrant devoting the resources to it. For example, the three 

respondents to Internet survey and end-user telephone interviews 

that developed some type of RBAC system in-house noted that their 

organization each employed more than 100,000 people. The one 

exception to the trend of in-house developers is one small security 

company whose line of business warranted early adoption of 

 

3Five firms per year is based on 26 companies that are known to presently market 

RBAC products that were developed over the 5 year period from 1996 through 

2000. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-12 

RBAC. The sum of this company’s employee and user base was 

150. The total cost of development for this company was $68,066 

over the course of a 1-year period, or $453.77 per user (see 

Table 7-9). 

Metric Cost 

Design and development cost $25,000 

Implementation costa $28,066 

Hardware costs $15,000 

Total cost $68,066 

Cost per user $453.77 

aThis respondent indicated that its implementation expense was 6 months at 60 

labor hours a month. Using the standard $77.96 loaded wage rate for systems 

administrators used through this report, the total implementation cost is 

estimated to be $28,066. 

 7.3 CURRENT AND PROJECTED DIFFUSION OF 

RBAC 

In general RBAC is still in the early stages of adoption. Most 

commercial products have only been available for a year or two 

and companies are just beginning to realize the potential savings 

RBAC presents. 

Companies that responded to our survey varied with respect to their 

current stage of RBAC development. Respondents were asked if 

they were considering adopting an RBAC system, were in the 

process of designing one, were in the process of implementing one, 

currently operating one, or had no plans to change access control 

systems. Table 7-10 gives the share of respondents in each of these 

categories. The most common response was that their company 

was considering adopting an RBAC system. It should be noted that 

survey response bias may have an upward bias on the implied 

current penetration of RBAC. Firms that have no interest or have 

not heard of RBAC are less likely to complete the survey. 

Companies that had systems in place or were in the process of 

implementation were all in the financial services and health case 

sectors. Other industries considering adoption were information 

technology, transportation, telecommunications, and electric utility. 

Table 7-9. One EndUser’s In-House RBAC 

Development Costs 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-13 

Status Percentage 

Considering adopting an RBAC system 42% 

In the process of designing an RBAC system 8% 

Currently implementing an RBAC system 12% 

Have RBAC system in operation 12% 

Have no plans to adopt an RBAC system 27% 

Total 100% 

Software developers believed that the greatest growth in the 

adoption of RBAC will continue to be in the health care, financial 

services and insurance, and information industries. These three 

industries currently conduct the majority of their information 

transactions electronically, and significant inefficiencies exist in 

current access control management. 

Software developers also indicated that most industries, to some 

degree, would implement some form of RBAC-enabled system by 

2005. They thought that substantial growth will be seen in the 

information sector, which includes technology and 

telecommunications. However, penetration in this industry will be 

slower than in the aforementioned three because the regulatory and 

security drivers are not as strong for the majority of constituent 

companies. Data gathered during an exercise with the Network 

Applications Consortium (NAC), an association of large softwaresystems end users, confirmed these trends. Software developer and 

NAC responses were averaged to estimate the RBAC market 

penetration rates presented in Table 7-11. 

As described above, industry experts are in basic agreement about 

which sectors will be most active in adopting RBAC systems. 

However, there was less consensus in the realized rate of 

penetration by 2005. Because of this uncertainty, three diffusion 

scenarios are used to present the empirical estimates. These 

scenarios represent low, medium, and high rates of projected 

penetration. These scenarios are presented in Table 7-11 by 

industry sector. Industry penetration is expressed as the percentage 

Table 7-10. 

Respondents’ Current 

Stage of RBAC 

Development 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-14 Table 7-11. RBAC Penetration Rates by Industry, 2005 

 Informationa

Finance and 

Insurance 

Health Care 

and Social Assistance Governmentb

Educational, 

Professional, 

Scientific, and 

Technical 

Services Manufacturing Utilities 

Transportation 

and 

Warehousing 

Number of Firms (500+ Employees) 

969 1,640 3,414 1 3,089 4,838 232 1,110 

Employment in Firms (500+ Employees) 

2,238,831 3,889,704 7,304,840 2,425,898 3,271,963 9,931,342 578,717 1,955,724 

Market Penetration Rates by 2005 

Low 20 35 40 5 10 5 15 15 Medium 30 45 50 10 15 10 25 25 High 40 55 60 15 20 15 35 30 

Number of Employees Managed Using RBAC by 2005 

Low 447,766 1,361,396 2,921,936 121,295 327,196 496,567 86,808 293,359 Medium 671,649 1,750,367 3,652,420 242,590 490,794 993,134 144,679 488,931 High 895,532 2,139,337 4,382,904 363,885 654,393 1,489,701 202,551 586,717 

aInformation includes telecommunications. bThis analysis assumes that by 2005 only departments and agencies within the federal government will have adopted RBAC. 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-15 

of employees in companies with employment greater than 500 that 

will be managed by RBAC systems by the end of 2005. Note that 

the relative adoption trends across industry sectors are maintained 

in each of the three scenarios. 

 7.4 NIST’S IMPACT ON THE DEVELOPMENT AND 

ADOPTION OF RBAC 

This section presents software developers’ understanding and 

valuation of NIST’s contributions to the development of RBAC. 

Based on the telephone interviews, almost all software developers 

indicated that NIST’s research and sponsorship have accelerated 

the RBAC development process. In addition, they indicated that 

NIST’s activities have lowered the cost of integrating RBAC 

functionality into their products; however, they said that the cost 

impact was secondary. 

All the developers interviewed were familiar with NIST’s articles in 

the professional literature, and many have attended at least one 

workshop or conference that was either sponsored by NIST or 

contained a presentation or information by NIST on the subject. 

However, software developers also indicated that they believe NIST 

has had no measurable impact on reducing end-user customization 

and implementation costs and enhancing the overall quality of 

RBAC products. 

 7.4.1 Accelerated Adoption and Availability 

Most developers believe that NIST’s research accelerated the rate of 

RBAC adoption by 1 year and consequently the availability of RBAC 

products by 1 year. In other words, the market introduction for the 

average software product was moved forward 1 year because of 

NIST’s research and RBAC awareness activities. One large software 

developer stated: 

The NIST prototype ... demonstrated the 

practicability of role-based access control, serving as 

a reference point and galvanizing customer interest. 

This helped to validate the importance of RBAC with 

respect to other possible approaches. It also clarified 

which potential RBAC features were central and most 

useful in our particular environment. 

Developers 

interviewed agreed 

that without NIST’s 

contributions and 

sponsorship RBAC 

would not be as 

evolved as it 

currently is. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-16 

A second developer stated that without NIST’s research the state of 

RBAC development would not have been able to reach its current 

level of development until approximately 2004 or perhaps even 

2005, but this developer was the only one of the eight to provide 

such a large acceleration estimate. The remaining developers were 

more conservative, stating that the time horizon was shifted forward 

by an average of one year. All developers interviewed agreed that 

without NIST’s contributions and sponsorship RBAC would not be as 

evolved as it currently is. 

 7.4.2 Reduced R&D Expenditures 

Most software developers interviewed indicated that NIST’s 

contributions have lowered the R&D costs on integrating RBAC into 

their software products. However, many had difficulty quantifying 

the magnitude of the impact. Based on respondents that did 

provide quantitative changes in labor costs, we estimate that NIST’s 

research reduced developers’ R&D expenditures by an average of 

8.2 percent. 

NIST’s work not only made developers aware of alternative access 

models, but it also provided a significant amount of research and 

prototype code. It may take some time before more developers 

include NIST’s work on constraints and role hierarchies in their 

products, although a small subset of developers has already done 

so. But even the developers implementing lower levels of RBAC 

credited NIST with lowering R&D costs. Developers agree that 

benchmarks provided by NIST’s research have had the benefit of 

reducing front-end R&D costs. Savings were expressed in terms of 

labor hours and computing resources. 

The more complex an RBAC software product’s features are, the 

more its software developer leverages NIST’s research. Developers 

that included only the most basic RBAC functionality in their 

products do not directly leverage NIST’s research into constraints 

and hierarchies. Therefore, the impact NIST’s research has had on 

their design and development costs would not be as significant as 

for those developers that do incorporate those advanced 

capabilities. It is possible that as more advanced RBAC 

functionalities are included in more commercial products NIST’s 

incremental impact will increase. 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-17 

One software developer noted that, although his product does not 

incorporate constraints or role hierarchies as defined by NIST, the 

NIST RBAC model underlies his principal product offering. He 

stated that without NIST’s research, his company never would have 

“gotten off the ground; the research and development would have 

been too costly.” Using the open platform provided by NIST, the 

company was able to first replicate the NIST model and then 

augment and tailor it to meet the specifications required in target 

industries. 

A second software developer stated: 

The NIST implementation was a groundbreaking and 

significant contribution to software technology. But 

its value didn’t come from being a “model” that 

could simply be imitated. 

As we see it, the greatest value of the NIST 

implementation was in animating a discussion 

throughout the industry, and we were able to benefit 

from that discussion, as were many others. This is 

probably one of the best examples of how an 

organization like NIST can help the private sector. 

The existence of a widely visible prototype 

advanced the concrete understanding of corporate 

IT architects so significantly that we were able to get 

unusually good early feedback validating and 

influencing our design choices. Getting educated 

feedback early undoubtedly saved us a significant 

amount of money. 

A second developer said that NIST’s research saved his company 

640 hours in development time by speeding up the development of 

his product’s RBAC functionality. He used NIST’s research to 

formulate the fundamentals of this particular functionality and to 

develop design specifications. Given that the average R&D budget 

used to develop RBAC functionality is $550,000, and that the 

average loaded hourly wage of people conducting this research is 

$70.60, we estimate that the developer avoided $45,184 in labor 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

7-18 

costs, or 8.2 percent of their R&D budget.1 This percentage 

reduction in R&D costs is used in the quantitative analysis as the 

typical cost savings experienced by software developers. 

 7.4.3 Reduced End User Customization and 

Implementation Costs 

Developers indicate that NIST’s activities have not affected the 

private cost of customizing and implementing RBAC and RBACenabled products. End users customize software to meet their data 

and applications needs and to configure it to correspond to their 

system’s structure. End users indicated that accelerating the rate of 

the availability of RBAC products does not make the process of 

introducing them in the workplace any less time consuming or 

costly. The customization and implementation processes that end 

users experience would be no different under the without-NIST 

scenario than the with-NIST scenario. Likewise, the costs that end 

users incur in completing these tasks would be the same. 

 7.4.4 RBAC Product Enhancement 

Although interviewees did agree that NIST publications and patents 

facilitated the R&D process, estimating the overall impact of NIST’s 

research on the quality of RBAC-enabled products is difficult. 

None of the software developers interviewed felt that NIST’s 

activities lead to better, higher quality, RBAC software products.2 

One software developer stated: 

We had arrived independently at many of the 

concepts that appeared in the NIST work, but 

NIST’s contribution was critical in establishing a 

taxonomy and a shared vocabulary for us, our 

customers and the industry as a whole. 

Developers note that it is unlikely that any one company would 

incorporate 100 percent of a NIST model. Rather they would 

supplement their own work with NIST’s, using NIST’s research to 

 

1According to the 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates 

published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for computer and 

information research scientists is $35.30 per hour, or $73,424 annually. This 

estimate was multiplied by 2.0 to estimate the additional cost to the employer 

for employee benefits, such as employer-sponsored health and dental insurance 

and 401(k) contributions, as well as administrative and overhead costs. 

2Although, at noted earlier, by NIST accelerating the introduction of RBAC, the 

quality of access control products in general has been improved. 
Section 7 — Survey Findings and Estimation of Impact Metrics 

7-19 

form a portion of the foundation of their products or as an example 

of future product capabilities. One developer stated: 

There are pieces in our model that don’t exist in the 

NIST model—for example, the notion of “scope,” 

which is very fundamental to solving the kinds of 

issues that present themselves in a highly distributed 

infrastructure such as Windows 2000. There are also 

things in the NIST model which we concluded were of 

limited application in the type of infrastructure we 

animate. 

A second developer stated that software developers might use, -on 

average, 30 to 40 percent of a NIST model. This is in keeping with 

earlier findings that several components of NIST’s models have not 

been incorporated into commercial product offerings. They deem 

NIST’s research helpful, but as in the words of one developer, 

products “need to walk before they can run.” 

Software developers foresee the inclusion of advanced nesting, 

constraints, and hierarchies in future products. Their comments 

suggest that NIST research in these areas will increase product 

offerings and reduce the cost of these traits’ inclusion. At present 

the NIST prototype code is considered too complicated. But as 

RBAC technologies and applications progress and more companies 

enter the market, software developers agree that the likelihood that 

more advanced components of NIST’s research will be included in 

products will increase. 
8-1 

 Measures of 8 Economic Return 

To estimate the measures of economic return from the NIST/ITL 

RBAC project, we first developed a baseline time series of the 

benefits and costs of RBAC. We then shifted this baseline time 

series that includes NIST’s contributions to reflect a counterfactual 

world without NIST’s impact on the development and adoption of 

RBAC. The value of NIST’s contributions is calculated as the 

change in the net benefits of RBAC with and without the NIST/ITL 

RBAC project. As presented in Section 6, the two NIST impact 

categories quantified through the data collection activities are the 

reduction in R&D expenditures and the acceleration of the 

development and adoption of RBAC systems. 

 8.1 BASELINE TIME SERIES OF THE BENEFITS 

AND COSTS OF RBAC 

The baseline time series is the observed world that included NIST’s 

contributions. Most industry experts agreed that significant 

penetration of existing products would be achieved by 2005. Thus, 

we model baseline benefits and costs associated with RBAC 

through 2006, one year after the penetration projections provided 

by industry. 

The fundamental components of benefits and costs associated with 

RBAC are described in Section 3. Eq. (3.2) shows the calculation of 

the time series net benefits (NBt). This equation is repeated below 

for convenience. 

NBt = R&Dsd*Nsdt + R&Dih*Niht + Σ [(OBit+ICit)*Empit] 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

8-2 

 8.1.1 Benefit and Cost Components 

Table 8-1 summarizes the key benefit and cost estimates described 

in Section 6 and links them to the variables in the net benefit 

equation. 

Table 8-1. Key Benefit and Cost Estimates 

Description Variable Value 

R&D costs to integrate RBAC into software 

developers product 

R&Dsd $550,000 per software company 

Number of software developments per year Nsdt Five software companies per year 

R&D costs to develop in-house RBAC software R&Dih $550,000 per in-house development 

Number of in-house developments per year Niht Five in-house developments per year 

End-user annual operational benefits per employee Obit $43.57 per employee 

End-user customization and implementation costs 

per employee 

ICit $78.36 per employee 

Number of employees managed by RBAC systems 

at time t 

Empit Three diffusion scenarios 

R&D Expenditures 

In the baseline time series, R&D expenditures begin in 1996, 1 year 

prior to the introduction of the first major RBAC products. Constant 

annual costs of $5,500,000 continue through the projection year of 

2006.1

End-User Benefits 

The annual operating benefits of RBAC are $43.57 per employee. 

This is held constant across industries. Employees first begin to be 

managed by RBAC systems in 2001; hence benefits are first realized 

in this year. The growth of employees managed using RBAC 

systems is assumed to follow an S-shaped diffusion. 

 

1Annual R&D costs are the sum of five software developers and five in-house 

developers each at $550,000. A constant level of annual expenditures is used 

because little information was available on the timing of the product 

development for the 26 currently available RBAC products or for R&D 

expenditures associated with in-house development. 
Section 8 — Measures of Economic Return 

8-3 

End User Costs 

Average end-user customization and implementation costs are 

estimated to be $78.36 per employee. These costs per employee 

are incurred 1 year prior to the realization of benefits. Thus, enduser customization and implementation costs begin in 2000. The 

time series of end-user costs follow the same diffusion patters 

described below but are lagged 1 year prior to the realization of 

benefits. 

 8.1.2 Diffusion of RBAC by Employee 

Because the future rate of penetration is uncertain, three different 

diffusion scenarios are used, reflecting a low, medium, and high 

penetration scenario. Table 8-2 repeats the three penetration 

scenarios by industry presented in Table 6-11. The percentage 

penetration in Table 8-2 gives the level of market penetration as of 

the last year of the analysis, 2006. 

Table 8-2. Industry Employment and Baseline Diffusion Scenarios 

Industry Low Medium High Employmenta

Information 20 30 40 2,238,831 

Finance and insurance 35 45 55 3,889,704 

Health care and social assistance 40 50 60 7,304,840 

Educational, professional, scientific, and technical 

services 10 15 20 3,271,963 

Manufacturing 5 10 15 9,931,342 

Utilities 15 25 35 578,717 

Transportation and warehousing 15 25 30 1,955,724 

Total 29,171,121 

aIndustry employment for companies with more than 500 employees. 

The total employment figures in Table 8-2 include employment of 

firms having more than 500 employees. This size cutoff was 

chosen based on conversations with industry experts and reflects a 

typical critical mass where RBAC is more likely to be adopted. We 

summed the total employment across industries to obtain an 

estimate of the total employment size to use for the analysis. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

8-4 

Given the final penetration rate with a particular scenario, we fit a 

logistic S-shaped curve to the data for each industry and then 

aggregated the curves with respect to time. Figure 8-1 shows the 

aggregate curves for the three penetration rate scenarios where 

each curve is an employee-weighted penetration curve that 

aggregates industry penetration. 

Figure 8-1. Aggregate Penetration Rates for Low, Medium, and High Rate Scenarios 

High Medium Low

Penetration Rate

2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Quarter

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

2001

 8.1.3 Time Series of RBAC Benefits and Costs 

Table 8-3 presents the time series of RBAC benefits and costs for the 

medium penetration scenario. R&D expenditures and end-user 

costs are shown as negative benefits. Net benefits begin negative 

reflecting early R&D expenditures and then become positive in 

2002 as RBAC penetration increases. 

 8.2 NIST’S IMPACT ON THE BENEFITS AND 

COSTS OF RBAC 

NIST’s contributions to the development and adoption of RBAC 

affect the time series of benefits and costs shown in Table 8-3 by 
Section 8 — Measures of Economic Return 

8-5 

Table 8-3. Baseline RBAC Benefits and Costs ($millions)a

Year 

R&D Expenditures: 

Software Developers and 

In-House Developmentb

End-Users’ 

Customization and 

Implementation Costsb

End-Users’ 

Operation 

Benefits 

Net Benefits of 

RBAC 

 R&Dsd*Nsdt + R&Dih*Niht  ICit* Empit  Obit* Empit NBt

1992c — — — — 

1993 — — — — 

1994 — — — — 

1995 — — — — 

1996 –5.05 — — –5.05 

1997 –5.05 — — –5.05 

1998 –5.05 — — –5.05 

1999 –5.05 — — –5.05 

2000 –5.05 –13.03 — –18.08 

2001 –5.05 –19.72 24.41 –0.36 

2002 –5.05 –36.48 61.37 19.84 

2003 –5.05 –64.40 129.71 60.26 

2004 –5.05 –38.24 250.37 207.08 

2005 –5.05 –8.45 322.01 308.51 

2006 — — 337.85 337.85 

NPV (2000) –53.23 –161.67 885.98 671.08 

aAll numbers have been adjusted to 2000 dollars. 

bExpenditures are shown as negative benefits. 

cTime series begins in 1992 because this is the first year of NIST expenditures. 

Z lowering R&D costs for software developers and in-house 

developers and 

Z accelerating the RBAC development and adoption process. 

 8.2.1 NIST’s Impact 

Table 8-4 summarizes the key change metrics needed to estimate 

the economic impact of the NIST/ITL RBAC project in terms of the 

variables in the net benefit change (∆NBt) equation presented in 

Section 4 (Eq. [4.2]). This equation is repeated below for 

convenience. 

∆NBt = ∆R&Dsd*∆Nsdt + ∆R&Dih*∆Niht + Σ[(OBit+ICit)* 

∆Empit] 

i i
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

8-6 

Table 8-4. Key Metrics for NIST’s Impact 

Variable Value Comment 

∆R&Dsd $31,900 per software company 5.8 percent reduction in R&D costs 

∆Nsdt 1 year R&D activities are accelerated by 1 year for all software 

companies 

∆R&Dih $31,900 per in-house 

development 

5.8 percent reduction in R&D costs 

∆Niht 1 year R&D activities are accelerated by 1 year for all in-house 

developments 

∆Empit 1 year Diffusion is accelerated by 1 year 

Without NIST’s contributions software developers and in-house 

developers would not have been initiated until 1997 (1-year delay) 

and R&D expenditures would have been 5.8 percent greater. 

The 1-year delay would also have delayed the realization of 

benefits (and costs) for end users. However, NIST’s influence does 

not alter the shape of the end-user diffusion curve; it just creates a 

parallel shift backward of 1 year. 

 8.2.2 Time Series of Counterfactual Benefits and Costs 

Table 8-5 shows the time series of benefits and costs for the 

baseline, counterfactual, and the difference, which is the change in 

net benefits attributable to NIST. The time series is for the medium 

penetration scenario. The net present value of NIST’s impact on the 

benefits of RBAC is $295 under the medium penetration scenario. 

 8.3 CALCULATING MEASURES OF ECONOMIC 

RETURN 

This change in net benefits attributable to NIST is compared to 

NIST’s expenditures to estimate measures of economic return to the 

NIST/ITL RBAC project. The time series of NIST expenditures for 

the medium penetration scenario is shown in Table 8-6. The NPV 

of NIST/ITL expenditures on the RBAC projects described in 

Section 2.6 are approximately $2.7 million. 
Section 8 — Measures of Economic Return 

8-7 

Year 

Baseline 

(with NIST) 

Counterfactual 

(without NIST) 

Total Change in Net 

Benefits (NBt ) 

1992 — — — 

1993 — — — 

1994 — — — 

1995 — — — 

1996 –5.05 — –5.05 

1997 –5.05 –5.50 0.45 

1998 –5.05 –5.50 0.45 

1999 –5.05 –5.50 0.45 

2000 –18.08 –5.50 –12.58 

2001 –0.36 –16.90 16.54 

2002 19.84 –0.33 20.17 

2003 60.26 18.54 41.72 

2004 207.08 56.32 150.76 

2005 308.51 193.53 114.97 

2006 337.85 288.33 49.52 

NPV (2000) 671.08 376.31 294.77 

aAll numbers have been adjusted to 2000 dollars. 

We used NIST’s expenditures and their related impact on the net 

benefits of RBAC to calculate a net present value (NPV), benefit-cost 

ratio, and an internal rate of return (IRR). The NPV of NIST’s 

expenditures is the difference between the NPV of the change in the 

net benefits to RBAC less the NPV of NIST’s expenditures. The 

benefit-cost ratio provides the NPV measure of the benefits of the 

project relative to the NPV costs of the project. The IRR is a measure 

of what the interest rate would need to be to make the initial costs of 

the project greater than the long-run return from the project. These 

measures of economic return are described in detail in Section 4. 

The three measures of economic return are presented in Table 8-7. 

The measures are shown for the three penetration scenarios. The 

NPV of NIST’s impact under the medium penetration scenario is 

$292 million. The benefit-cost ratio ranges from 69 to 158, and the 

IRR ranges from 39 to 90 percent. 

Table 8-5. Time Series of 

Industry Net Benefits 

With and Without NIST’s 

Contributions 

($millions)a
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

8-8 

Year Total Change in Net Benefits NIST Expenditures 

1992 0.00 0.06 

1993 0.00 0.06 

1994 0.00 0.19 

1995 0.00 0.47 

1996 –5.05 0.45 

1997 0.45 0.39 

1998 0.45 0.34 

1999 0.45 0.04 

2000 –12.58 0.04 

2001 16.54 0.04 

2002 20.17 0.00 

2003 41.72 0.00 

2004 150.76 0.00 

2005 114.97 0.00 

2006 49.52 0.00 

NPV (2000) 294.77 2.70 

aAll numbers have been adjusted to 2000 dollars. 

Table 8-7. Measures of Economic Return to the NIST/ITL RBAC Project ($millions)a

 High Medium Low 

a. NPV change in net benefits 427.42 294.77 185.71 

b. NPV NIST expenditure 2.70 2.70 2.70 

NPV of the NIST/ITL RBAC project (a – b) 425 292 183 

Benefit-cost ratio 158 109 69 

Internal rate of return 90% 62% 39% 

aAll numbers have been adjusted to 2000 dollars. 

Table 8-6. Time Series of 

Net Benefits due to 

NIST’s Contributions and 

NIST Expenditures 

($millions)a
R-1 

 

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 Appendix A: 

 Questionnaire for 

 RBAC Technology 

 Developers 
A-1 

Questionnaire for RBAC Technology Developers 

Introduction 

On behalf of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Research Triangle 

Institute (RTI) is investigating the benefits and costs of using Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) as 

an alternative to existing access control techniques. Specific issues of interest are 

• the effect of NIST’s involvement on the development of RBAC and commercial 

products incorporating RBAC, 

• a comparison of the costs and benefits to end users of RBAC with other access control 

technologies, and 

• the effect of NIST’s involvement on the diffusion of RBAC. 

Our study would benefit a great deal from your input. Please read and consider the enclosed 

questions as they relate to your company’s products. We encourage you to collaborate with your 

colleagues when answering these questions, because several questions span a variety of aspects of 

the product design and development process. 

Any information you provide will remain strictly confidential. In the published results of this 

study, information that you provide that is specific to your organization will not be presented 

explicitly and will not be attributed to your organization without your permission. Your name 

will not be shown. However, your organization’s name will be acknowledged with appreciation 

in a list of survey participants. 

You may complete the questionnaire online at https://public.rti.org/rbac/. All information 

transferred electronically will be encrypted. Alternatively, you can e-mail or fax your responses 

to us at bkropp@rti.org or (919) 541-6683. At any time, if you have any questions, please feel 

free to contact either Brian Kropp at (919) 485-5584 or Mike Gallaher at (919) 541-5935. Thank 

you for your input to our study. 

1. Contact and Company Information 

Contact Name: 

Company Name: 

Mailing Address: 

Title: 

Phone Number: 

E-mail: 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

A-2 

2. Market Penetration of RBAC 

2.1 Please list and describe your company’s software products and systems that embody RBAC 

technology. In particular, we are interested in additional or linked ACL functionalities 

(other than RBAC) incorporated into your products. 

Product Name Brief Description 

 

2.2 Please describe how your RBAC technology product is used by firms or organizations to 

control and manage access to information and system resources? 

2.3 Please list the major industries that use your product in Table 2-1 and, for each industry, 

indicate 

• what competing technologies exist in these industries and 

• the percentage of firms that are currently using an RBAC system in each industry. 

Table 2-1. Industry Sectors Using Your Product 

Industry Competing Technologies 

Current Percentage of Firms Using 

Role-Based Access Control 

Example: Banking Identity-Based ACL 5%

 

 
Appendix A — Questionnaire for RBAC Technology Developers 

A-3 

2.4 We are also interested in the penetration/adoption rate of RBAC into the near future. In 

Table 2-2, for the years listed, please estimate the percentage of firms that will be using an 

RBAC or RBAC-based product. Please provide separate penetration estimates for each 

industry listed in Table 2-1. 

Table 2-2. Penetration/Adoption of RBAC 

Industry Current 2003 2006 2009 

Example: Banking 10% 65% 70% 75% 

 

2.5 Technology Choice: What factors are most important to your customers in choosing the 

access control technology they use (e.g., political support, administrative costs, other)? 

2.6 How long does it typically take your customers to install and make fully operational a new 

system with RBAC technology? 

 months 

 total person-hours 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

A-4 

3. Future Technology Improvements 

3.1 What improvements in RBAC technology do you envision occurring in the next 5 to 10 

years, and how will they affect implementation costs, annual system administrative costs, 

and security violations/costs? 

RBAC Technology Improvements: 

Impact on Installation Costs: 

Impact on Annual System Administrative Costs: 

Impact on Number and Severity of Security Violations: 

3.2 What improvements in competing (non-RBAC) technologies do you envision occurring in 

the next 5 to 10 years, and how will they affect implementation costs, annual system 

administrative costs, and security violations/costs? 

Competing Technology Improvements: 

Impact on Installation Costs: 

Impact on Annual System Administrative Costs: 

Impact on Number and Severity of Security Violations: 
Appendix A — Questionnaire for RBAC Technology Developers 

A-5 

3.3 Are the technology improvement listed in Questions 3.1 and 3.2 reflected in your RBAC 

market penetration estimates provided in Table 2-2? 

 Yes 

 No—how would your market penetration estimates change? 

4. Software Development 

As part of our evaluation of the benefits of RBAC, we need to estimate the cost of developing the 

software tools used by information and system security administrators. 

4.1 When did your company first introduce RBAC technology into your software products? 

 (month/year) 

4.2 What was your company’s investment in the development of RBAC? If the investment was 

a joint venture with other companies or educational or governmental agencies (other than 

NIST), please estimate their total expenditures in developing the technology and indicate 

the partner. 

a. Length of time to develop 

(months) 

b. Your company’s approximate 

R&D investment ($) 

c. Cofunding or R&D expenditures 

by partner companies ($) 

4.3 Please comment on what sources aided your development of products and services that 

incorporate RBAC technology. 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

A-6 

4.4 Did your R&D build on concepts and theories available in the professional literature? 

 Yes 

 No 

4.5 Would your industry have developed an RBAC technology without the availability of 

concepts and theories in the professional literature? 

 Yes 

 No 

5. NIST’s Contribution to the Development of RBAC 

Since 1992, NIST has invested resources in developing and supporting RBAC capabilities. 

5.1 Were you aware of NIST’s activities? 

 Yes (go to Question 5.3) 

 No (go to Question 5.2) 

5.2 NIST has developed several RBAC models ranging from RBAC0 to RBAC3. Each model 

contains greater levels of complexity in terms of constraints and hierarchies. The 

following table provides a description of the various types of RBAC models. 

Hierarchies Constraints 

RBAC0 No No 

RBAC1 Yes No 

RBAC2 No Yes 

RBAC3 Yes Yes 

RBAC3 is the most complex model and is often described as the NIST model. Does your 

product incorporate the NIST model for RBAC? 

 Yes 

 No 
Appendix A — Questionnaire for RBAC Technology Developers 

A-7 

5.3 Please estimate the percentage of RBAC developers that incorporate the NIST model into 

their product? 

 percent 

5.4 Please comment on the impact NIST has had on the development of your company’s 

RBAC technology. 

5.5 Has NIST’s involvement in RBAC changed the time frame for when RBAC technology has 

become available for use? 

 Yes 

 No 

5.6 When do you predict industry would have introduced a software product with comparable 

capabilities without the aid of NIST? 

 (year) 

5.7 Has NIST’s involvement in RBAC increased the penetration rate of the technologies that 

you described in Table 2.2? 

 Yes, by how much? (e.g., 5 percent more firms per year will adopt the technology) 

 No 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

A-8 

5.8 Has NIST’s involvement in RBAC decreased your development costs? 

 Yes 

 No 

5.9 If yes, by how much? (e.g., total development costs were 5 percent less) 

5.10 Has NIST’s involvement in RBAC improved the quality of your product for end users? 

 Yes, by how much? (e.g., 5 percent easier to move users in and out of roles) 

 No 

5.11 Has NIST’s involvement in RBAC changed the type and number of industries that will use 

RBAC? Please explain. 
Appendix A — Questionnaire for RBAC Technology Developers 

A-9 

6. Other Benefits 

Please describe other issues that you think are important in assessing the benefits or costs of an 

access control system. 

Thank you for your participation! 

Check one or both of the following boxes if you would like to receive a draft and/or final versions 

on the study:

 Yes—please send me a draft version of the report to review prior to publication. 

 Yes—please send me the final version of the report upon completion of the study. 
 Appendix B: 

 Questionnaire for 

 Information and 

 System Security 

 Administrators 
B-1 

Questionnaire for Information and System Security Administrators 

Introduction 

On behalf of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Research Triangle 

Institute (RTI) is investigating the benefits and costs of using role-based access control (RBAC) as 

an alternative to existing access control techniques. The following specific issues are of interest: 

• the administrative costs of establishing and changing user profiles when RBAC or other access 

control technologies are used; 

• the frequency of security violations, both internal and external, when RBAC and other access 

control technologies are used; and 

• the difficulty of altering or changing access control systems. 

Our study would benefit a great deal from your input. Please read and consider the enclosed 

questions as they relate to your company’s products. We encourage you to collaborate with your 

colleagues when answering these questions, because several questions span a variety of aspects of 

the product design and development process. 

Any information you provide will remain strictly confidential. In the published results of this 

study, information that you provide that is specific to your organization will not be presented 

explicitly and will not be attributed to your organization, without your permission. Your name 

will not be shown. However, your organization’s name will be acknowledged with appreciation 

in a list of survey participants. 

You may complete the questionnaire online at https://public.rti.org/rbac/. All information 

transferred electronically will be encrypted. Alternatively, you can e-mail or fax your responses 

to us at bkropp@rti.org or (919) 541-6683. At any time, if you have any questions, please feel 

free to contact either Brian Kropp at (919) 485-5584 or Mike Gallaher at (919) 541-5935. Thank 

you for your input to our study. 

1. Contact and Company Information 

Contact Name: 

Company Name: 

Mailing Address: 

Title: 

Phone Number: 

E-mail: 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

B-2 

2. Access Control Technologies Used by Your Firm 

2.1 In the table below, please identify the access control technologies that your firm or 

organization uses or has used (or plans to use in the near future), including products that 

were developed in-house. Please note that if you are currently using an RBAC-based 

technology we are interested in information on both the RBAC technology and the 

alternative technology(ies) you are currently using (or have previously used). 

Table 2-1. Access Control Technologies in Use (or Used) 

Technology Trade Name When Installed Currently in Use 

Example: RBAC Schumann SAM Tivolie 

SecureWay 

1999 Yes 

Example: IdentityBased ACL Unix-based systems Web 

server 

1995 No—replaced in 1999 

 

2.2 What factors were important in choosing the access control technology that your firm uses 

(e.g., political support, administrative costs, others)? 
Appendix B — Questionnaire for Information and System Security Administrator 

B-3 

2.3 If your firm currently using multiple access control technologies, what problems have you 

experienced from the interactions between the technologies? 

As part of this study we are interested in the activities a company must undertake to adopt RBAC 

systems. Typically, before a company can implement an access control technology a period of 

system design must occur. This period consists of creating the system and defining all appropriate 

roles and the privileges for each of those roles. Following this step, system implementation

occurs where users are migrated from the previous access control technology to the current 

technology. Once all users have been placed into the correct roles, system maintenance occurs 

where information and system administrators move users in and out of existing roles as they 

change roles within the company. 

2.4 What best describes you company’s current status regarding the use of RBAC systems? 

 We are considering adopting an RBAC system. (Go to Question 2.5) 

 We are in the process of designing an RBAC system. (Go to Question 2.5) 

 We are currently implementing an RBAC system. (Go to Section 3) 

 We have an RBAC system in operation. (Go to Section 3) 

 We have no plans to adopt an RBAC system. (Go to Question 2.9) 

2.5 Does your company plan to develop an in-house RBAC technology or purchase a 

commercial system, such as an enterprise management package? 

 In-house 

 Commercial system. What package are you considering? _______________________ 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

B-4 

2.6 What is your company’s projected completion data for implementing the RBAC 

technology? 

_________ month, _________ year 

2.7 What is the total number of employees in your firm? 

_____________________ Total number of employees in 1999 

2.8 What percentage of those employees are you planning to manage using RBAC 

technologies? 

_____________________ Percent 

(Skip to Section 5) 

2.9 Have you investigated the potential use of an RBAC system? 

 Yes: What were the disadvantages of implementing RBAC? 

 No 

(Go to End) 

3. RBAC System Design

For the following questions, please think about the system design phase that your 

company went through to develop your RBAC-based system. Within this section, the 

term “custom” design refers to system components that were either developed in-house 

or were developed specifically for your company by an outside vendor. 

3.1 Did your company attempt to develop a custom RBAC system? 

 Yes (Go to Question 3.2) 

 No (Go to Question 3.6) 

3.2 When did your company first start pursuing the development of a custom RBAC system? 

_________ Year 
Appendix B — Questionnaire for Information and System Security Administrator 

B-5 

3.3 Was your company successful in developing a custom RBAC-based access control system 

in-house? 

 Yes (Go to Question 3.4) 

 No (Go to Question 3.6) 

3.4 What were the total costs of developing the custom technology? 

 Dollars 

3.5 How long did it take to develop the custom technology? 

 Years 

(Skip to Section 4) 

3.6 Did your company purchase a commercial RBAC technology? 

 Yes (for those that responded yes to Question 3.6, go to Section 4, for those that 

responded no to Question 3.6, go to Question 3.7) 

 No (Go to Section 4) 

3.7 Was your company aware of RBAC technology before you purchased the commercial 

product? 

 Yes 

 No (Go to Section 4) 

3.8 Why did your company not pursue a custom-designed RBAC system? 

 Too costly 

 Lacked technical skills and knowledge 

 Other ___________ 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

B-6 

4. System Implementation 

For the following questions, please think about the system implementation phase that 

your company went through in installing your most recent access control technology. 

4.1 What is the total number of employees in your firm? 

 Total number of employees in 1999 

4.2 What percentage of those employees are currently managed using RBAC technologies? 

 Percent 

4.3 When you changed from your previous access control technology to RBAC, how long did 

it take for these employees to be migrated from your old access control technology (e.g., 

identity-based ACL to RBAC) and what was the level of effort involved? 

 Months @ person-hours per month 

4.4 Did your company purchase any new software or hardware to support the migration to an 

RBAC technology? What were your expenditures? 

4.4a Does the new software you purchased support functions other than RBAC, such as 

password synchronization or single sign-on functions? If so, please describe these 

additional functions. 
Appendix B — Questionnaire for Information and System Security Administrator 

B-7 

4.5 Did you use a systems integration company to help with installing the RBAC feature? If 

so, what was their role and approximately what were your expenditures? 

4.6 In addition to basic software, hardware, and installation costs, for each change that was 

made, what other costs (external or internal) did your organization incur associated with 

transferring from one access control technology to another? 

4.7 Do you plan to expand the use of RBAC in the near future? 

 Yes, expand to __________ percent of employees 

 No 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

B-8 

5. The Benefits and Costs of Maintaining RBAC Systems 

For the following questions, please think about the system maintenance phase that your 

company is currently in. 

5.1 For each technology listed in Table 2-1, indicate in Table 5-1 the average time required to 

complete the following tasks: 

a. When a new hire is made, on average, how much time is required to establish 

his/her user privileges? 

b. When an employee changes jobs within the organization, on average, how much 

time is required to change his/her existing privileges? 

c. When an employee changes jobs within the organization, on average, how much 

time is required to establish new privileges? 

d. When an employee leaves the organization, on average, how much time is required 

to terminate his/her user profile? Please list responses in Table 5-1. 

Table 5-1. Time to Complete Tasks 

Technology 

a. 

Assigning Existing 

Privileges to New 

Users 

b. 

Changing 

Existing Users’ 

Privileges 

c. 

Establishing New 

Privileges to 

Existing Users 

d. 

Termination 

of Privileges 

Example: RBAC ____ Minutes ____ Minutes ____ Minutes ____ Minutes

Identity-based ACL ____ Minutes ____ Minutes ____ Minutes ____ Minutes

 

5.2 In a typical year, how many times does your company perform the administrative tasks 

listed in Table 5-1? 

a. Assigning Existing Privileges to New Users times/year 

b. Changing Existing Users’ Privileges times/year 

c. Establishing New Privileges to Existing Users times/year 

d. Termination of Privileges times/year 
Appendix B — Questionnaire for Information and System Security Administrator 

B-9 

5.3 When a new hire is made or a user changes roles, how much downtime does that 

employee experience while waiting for access to be granted or changed (i.e., how many 

hours or days is the employee unproductive while waiting for access)? Is the amount of 

downtime different for RBAC-based systems compared to alternative technology-based 

systems? 

5.4 For each technology listed in Table 2-1, are there any future improvements that you 

anticipate occurring in the next 5 to 10 years that will affect administrative costs? 

5.5 Approximately how many person-hours per year (or full-time staff equivalents) does your 

company spend on performing access control (authorization) management functions? 

 hours/year 

5.6 What is the average full loaded hourly wage rate of your systems and information security 

administrative staff?

 $/hour 
The Economic Impact of Role-Based Access Control 

B-10 

Security Administration 

5.7 For each technology listed in Table 2-1, in the first two columns of Table 5-2, please 

indicate if that technology has ever experienced a security violation and the number of 

violations per year. In the third column of Table 5-2, please estimate the cost per security 

violation to the average firm in your industry using each access control technology. 

Table 5-2. Security Effects by Access Control Technology 

Technology 

Security Violation 

(Yes/No) 

Number of Security 

Violations per Year 

Average Cost per 

Security Violation 

Example: RBAC Yes X $Y 

Example: Identity-based 

ACL 

Yes Z $U 

 

5.8 For each technology listed in Table 2-1, are there any future improvements that you 

anticipate occurring in the next 5 to 10 years that will reduce the frequency of security 

violations or the cost per security violation? 
Appendix B — Questionnaire for Information and System Security Administrator 

B-11 

6. Other Benefits 

6.1 Please describe other benefits or costs that you think are important in assessing the effect 

of an access control system. 

Thank you for your participation! 

Check the following box if you would like to receive a final version of the study:

 Yes—please send me the final version of the report upon completion of the study.