Enabling Adaptive and Secure Extranets

Extranets are tools that enable an organization to share part of its information system and infrastructure with other parties. Reaching this goal requires shielding from intruders while at the same time dynamically opening intranet resources. This article discusses how should such an extranet be designed. A solution that automates access control definition and enforcement is presented, which also addresses wide scale user management using a capability-based model. A prototype using the SPKI infrastructure is described that offers strong authentication thanks to smart cards