Centralized Authorization Service?

Question

Are there any open source centralized authorization services available? There are lots of solutions for centralizing the authentication information (eg: CAS and JOSSO), but what about the authorization information?

There are some really good authorization frameworks (eg: Spring Security (formerly Acegi) and Seam Security), but it seems that I have to composite these into individual tiers or services. In other words, I can't run them standalone very easily. With a SOA, it seems like it would be very valuable to centralize not just the authentication but the authorization information as well (ie: roles, permissions, rules, etc.).

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Are you looking for something that supports XACML? If so, the closest to open source you can get is the OpenSSO project which has portions of what you seek.

Answer 2

The openly available Kerberos implementations provide Client Service Authorization as well as Client Authentication.

Read about Using Kerberos 5 on Red Hat Linux.