Toward edge minability for role mining in bipartite networks

• Published in: Physica A 2016-11, Vol.462, p.274-286
• Main Authors: Dong, Lijun, Wang, Yi, Liu, Ran, Pi, Benjie, Wu, Liuyi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bipartite network; Edge minability; Information management; Role mining
• ISSN: 0378-4371; 1873-2119
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2016.06.068

Bipartite network models have been extensively used in information security to automatically generate role-based access control (RBAC) from dataset. This process is called role mining. However, not all the topologies of bipartite networks are suitable for role mining; some edges may even reduce the quality of role mining. This causes unnecessary time consumption as role mining is NP-hard. Therefore, to promote the quality of role mining results, the capability that an edge composes roles with other edges, called the minability of edge, needs to be identified. We tackle the problem from an angle of edge importance in complex networks; that is an edge easily covered by roles is considered to be more important. Based on this idea, the k-shell decomposition of complex networks is extended to reveal the different minability of edges. By this way, a bipartite network can be quickly purified by excluding the low-minability edges from role mining, and thus the quality of role mining can be effectively improved. Extensive experiments via the real-world datasets are conducted to confirm the above claims. •A measure of the edge importance of bipartite network in role mining is proposed.•The k-shell decomposition is applied to the role mining of bipartite networks.•A bipartite network can be purified and the quality of role mining can be improved.