Chinese wall policy

A security policy to prevent conflict of interest caused by an entity (e.g., a consultant) interacting with competing firms. (See: Brewer-Nash model.)

Tutorial: All information is categorized into mutually exclusive conflict-of-interest classes I(1), I(2), ..., I(M), and each firm F(1), F(2), ..., F(N) belongs to exactly one class. The policy states that if a consultant has access to class I(i) information from a firm in that class, then the consultant may not access information from another firm in that same class, but may access

information from another firm that is in a different class. Thus, the policy creates a barrier to communication between firms that are in the same conflict-of-interest class. Brewer and Nash modeled enforcement of this policy [BN89], including dealing with policy violations that could occur because two or more consultants work for the same firm.