Usage control enforcement present and future

The state of the art as well as a possible future of control and signaling mechanisms that is called as consumer-side enforcement mechanisms is presented. Usage is concerned with operations on ucdata, whereas non-usage actions are all those that do not involve ucdata. Usage restrictions prohibit specific usages under given circumstances. Action requirements express mandatory actions that must be executed either unconditionally or after a specified usage has been performed. A control mechanism can be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of both. Software resides at the application, runtime system, operating system, or CPU level. A control mechanism can either be local or distributed. Enforcement by inhibition, as done in most cases, is sufficient for preventing undesired usages.