Integrated security infrastructures for law enforcement agencies

Published online: 22 June 2013. This paper is an improved version of “Security Infrastructures: Towards the INDECT System Security” from the same authors, presented in the 5th International Conference on Multimedia Communication Services & Security (MCSS 2012), Krakow (Poland), May 31- June 1, 2012.This paper provides an overview of the security architecture for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) designed by the INDECT project, and in particular the security infrastructures that have been deployed so far. These security infrastructures can be organized in the following main areas: Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and user management, communications security, and new cryptographic algorithms. This paper presents the new ideas, architectures and deployed testbeds for these areas. In particular, it explains the inner structure of the INDECT PKI employed for federated identity management, the different technologies employed in the VPN testbed, the INDECT Block Cipher (IBC) – a novel cryptographic algorithm that has being integrated into OpenSSL library, and how IBC-enabled TLS/SSL sessions and X.509 certificates are employed to protect INDECT applications. All proposed mechanisms have been designed to work in an integrated fashion as the security foundation of all systems being developed by the INDECT project for LEAs.This work has been funded by the EU Project INDECT (Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment)—grant agreement number: 218086

Security architecture for law enforcement agencies

In order to carry out their duty to serve and protect, law enforcement agencies (LEAs) must deploy new tools and applications to keep up with the pace of evolving technologies. However, police information and communication technology (ICT) systems have stringent security requirements that may delay the deployment of these new applications, since necessary security measures must be implemented first. This paper presents an integrated security architecture for LEAs that is able to provide common security services to novel and legacy ICT applications, while fulfilling the high security requirements of police forces. By reusing the security services provided by this architecture, new systems do not have to implement custom security mechanisms themselves, and can be easily integrated into existing police ICT infrastructures. The proposed LEA security architecture features state-of-the-art technologies, such as encrypted communications at network and application levels, or multifactor authentication based on certificates stored in smart cards.Web of Science7517107321070