Access Control In and For the Real World

Access control is a core component of any information-security strategy. Researchers have spent tremendous energy over the past forty years defining abstract access-control models and proving various properties about them. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how well these models work in real socio-technical systems (i.e., real human organizations). This dissertation describes the results of two qualitative studies (involving 52 participants from four companies, drawn from the financial, software, and healthcare sectors) and observes that the current practice of access control is dysfunctional at best. It diagnoses the broken assumptions that are at the heart of this dysfunction, and offers a new definition of the access-control problem that is grounded in the requirements and limitations of the real world

A QUICK LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF PROTECTION – NINE GUIDELINES TO FOLLOW

With the worst part of the economic crisis gone – at least I hope so – we can clearly conclude that, despite the real downturns and dropping revenues all over the IT business environment, the information technology did not stop its progress – quite on the contrary, has even developed and launched new and more advanced solutions within both software and hardware fields.protection, guidelines, it security

The State of the Electronic Identity Market: Technologies, Infrastructure, Services and Policies

Authenticating onto systems, connecting to mobile networks and providing identity data to access services is common ground for most EU citizens, however what is disruptive is that digital technologies fundamentally alter and upset the ways identity is managed, by people, companies and governments. Technological progress in cryptography, identity systems design, smart card design and mobile phone authentication have been developed as a convenient and reliable answer to the need for authentication. Yet, these advances ar enot sufficient to satisfy the needs across people's many spheres of activity: work, leisure, health, social activities nor have they been used to enable cross-border service implementation in the Single Digital Market, or to ensure trust in cross border eCommerce. The study findings assert that the potentially great added value of eID technologies in enabling the Digital Economy has not yet been fulfilled, and fresh efforts are needed to build identification and authentication systems that people can live with, trust and use. The study finds that usability, minimum disclosure and portability, essential features of future systems, are at the margin of the market and cross-country, cross-sector eID systems for business and public service are only in their infancy. This report joins up the dots, and provides significant exploratory evidence of the potential of eID for the Single Digital Market. A clear understanding of this market is crucial for policy action on identification and authentication, eSignature and interoperability.JRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

Information Security Synthesis in Online Universities

Information assurance is at the core of every initiative that an organization executes. For online universities, a common and complex initiative is maintaining user lifecycle and providing seamless access using one identity in a large virtual infrastructure. To achieve information assurance the management of user privileges affected by events in the user's identity lifecycle needs to be the determining factor for access control. While the implementation of identity and access management systems makes this initiative feasible, it is the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure that makes it complex and challenging. The objective of this paper1 is to describe the complexities, propose a practical approach to building a foundation for consistent user experience and realizing security synthesis in online universities.Comment: 20 page

Identity Management in Information Age Government: Exploring Concepts, Definitions, Approaches and Solutions

Our research question is the following: What could be a useful working definition of Identity Management in government at present? a) What are conceptualisations, definitions and approaches of IDM in government according to academic literature? b) Which e-authentication solutions have been developed in other jurisdictions

Tutorial: Identity Management Systems and Secured Access Control

Identity Management has been a serious problem since the establishment of the Internet. Yet little progress has been made toward an acceptable solution. Early Identity Management Systems (IdMS) were designed to control access to resources and match capabilities with people in well-defined situations, Today’s computing environment involves a variety of user and machine centric forms of digital identities and fuzzy organizational boundaries. With the advent of inter-organizational systems, social networks, e-commerce, m-commerce, service oriented computing, and automated agents, the characteristics of IdMS face a large number of technical and social challenges. The first part of the tutorial describes the history and conceptualization of IdMS, current trends and proposed paradigms, identity lifecycle, implementation challenges and social issues. The second part addresses standards, industry initia-tives, and vendor solutions. We conclude that there is disconnect between the need for a universal, seamless, trans-parent IdMS and current proposed standards and vendor solutions

The Development of a graduate course on identity management for the Department of Networking, Security, and Systems Administration

Digital identities are being utilized more than ever as a means to authenticate computer users in order to control access to systems, web services, and networks. To maintain these digital identities, administrators turn to Identity Management solutions to offer protection for users, business partners, and networks. This paper proposes an analysis of Identity Management to be accomplished in the form of a graduate level course of study for a ten-week period for the Networking, Security, and Systems Administration department at Rochester Institute of Technology. This course will be designed for this department because of its emphasis on securing, protecting, and managing the identities of users within and across networks. Much of the security-related courses offered by the department focus primarily on security within enterprises. Therefore, Identity Management, a topic that is becoming more popular within enterprises each day, would compliment these courses. Students that enroll in this course will be more equipped to satisfy the needs of modern enterprises when they graduate because they will have a better understanding of how to address security issues that involve managing user identities across networks, systems, and enterprises. This course will focus on several aspects of Identity Management and its use in enterprises today. Covered during the course will be the frameworks of Identity Management, for instance, Liberty Identity Federation Framework and OASIS SAML 2.0; the Identity Management models; and some of the major Identity Management solutions that are in use today such as Liberty Alliance, Microsoft Passport, and Shibboleth. This course will also provide the opportunity to gain hands on experience by facilitating exemplar technologies used in laboratory investigations

International E-Conveyancing Strategies: Lessons for South Africa

Conveyancing is the legal process of creating, transferring and dealing with interest in land. In a global world, where there is an increased use of technology to streamline and implement fast and efficient client service delivery, it would suffice that the registration process of property be digitatised. Yet in South Africa and other countries this process remains manual. Different countries have looked at innovative e-conveyancing strategies and implemented these strategies successfully. It is the aim of this article to review the different e-conveyancing strategies used by different countries and how they were implemented giving focus to the South African conveyancing process. The article examines the conveyancing process of South Africa through the use of a conceptual framework, mapping the different stakeholders involved in the end-to-end conveyancing process. This article presents the benefits associated with e-conveyancing for the South African context and gives recommendations on the implementation of this process within South Africa. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n10p23

Policy based network management : state of the industry and desired functionality for the enterprise network: security policy / testing technology evaluation.

Policy-based network management (PBNM) uses policy-driven automation to manage complex enterprise and service provider networks. Such management is strongly supported by industry standards, state of the art technologies and vendor product offerings. We present a case for the use of PBNM and related technologies for end-to-end service delivery. We provide a definition of PBNM terms, a discussion of how such management should function and the current state of the industry. We include recommendations for continued work that would allow for PBNM to be put in place over the next five years in the unclassified environment