Chinese Wall

Chinese wall refers to a reverse engineering method involving two separate groups. One group reverse-engineers the original code and writes thorough documentation, while the other group writes new code based only on the new documentation. This method insulates the new code from the old code, so that it will not be considered a derived work. See also clean room design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

The Chinese Wall Model is a security model where read/write access to files is governed by membership of data in conflict-of-interest classes and datasets. This is the basic model used to provide both privacy and integrity for data. See also Brewer and Nash model.

The Brewer and Nash model was constructed to provide information security access controls that can change dynamically. This security model, also known as the Chinese wall model, was designed to provide controls that mitigate conflict of interest in commercial organizations, and is built upon an information flow model.

In the Brewer and Nash Model no information can flow between the subjects and objects in a way that would create a conflict of interest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewer_and_Nash_model

Conflict of interest
The following are the most common forms of conflicts of interest:

Self-dealing
in which public and private interests collide, for example issues involving privately held business interests.

Outside employment
in which the interests of one job contradict another.

Family interests
in which a spouse, child, or other close relative is employed (or applies for employment) or where goods or services are purchased from such a relative or a firm controlled by a relative. For this reason, many employment applications ask if one is related to a current employee. If this is the case, the relative could then recuse from any hiring decisions.

Gifts
from friends who also do business with the person receiving the gifts. (Such gifts may include non-tangible things of value such as transportation and lodging.)

Pump and dump
A stock broker (from a boiler room down the street to a big broker uptown) which owns a security artificially inflates the price by "upgrading" it or spreading rumors, sells the security and adds short position, then "downgrade" the security or spread negative rumors to push the price down.

Other improper acts that are sometimes classified as conflicts of interest are probably better classified elsewise.

Accepting bribes can be classified as corruption; almost everyone in a position of authority, particularly public authority, has the potential for such wrongdoing.

Similarly, use of government or corporate property or assets for personal use is fraud, and classifying this as a conflict of interest does not improve the analysis of this problem.

Nor should unauthorized distribution of confidential information, in itself, be considered conflict of interest.

For these improper acts, there is no inherent conflict of roles (see above), unless being a (fallible) human being rather than (say) a robot in a position of power or authority is considered to be a conflict.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest

Chinese Wall Security Model

All corporate information is stored in a hierarchically arranged filing system such as that shown in figure 1. There are three levels of significance:

Objects
at the lowest level, we consider individual items of information, each concerning a single corporation. In keeping with BLP, we will refer to the files in which such information is stored as objects;

Company dataset
at the intermediate level, we group all objects which concern the same corporation together into what we will call a company dataset;

Conflict of interest class
at the highest level, we group together all company datasets whose corporations are in competition. We will refer to each such group as a conflict of interest class.

THE CHINESE WALL SECURITY POLICY*
by Dr. David F. C. Brewer and Dr. Michael J. Nash
http://www.gammassl.co.uk/topics/chinesewall.html
PDF
http://www.gammassl.co.uk/topics/chwall.pdf