Why is it difficult to implement distributed authorization?

Implementing distributed authorization presents several challenges:

• Managing and enforcing authorization policies consistently across disparate, independently managed systems is complex. Each system might have its own local access control mechanisms.

• Ensuring synchronization of authorization data, such as user roles or permissions, across a geographically or logically distributed environment is difficult. Latency and network partitions can lead to inconsistencies.

• Establishing and maintaining trust relationships among different authorization domains or entities is a significant hurdle. Determining which remote entities are authorized to make or enforce decisions requires a robust trust infrastructure.

• The system must scale to accommodate a growing number of users, resources, and services while maintaining acceptable performance for authorization checks.

• Handling heterogeneity in authorization mechanisms or policy languages across different components of the distributed system adds to the complexity.

These difficulties are discussed in various contexts, including models for the World Wide Web, such as in Kahan's "A Distributed Authorization Model for WWW."