27,618 research outputs found
My private cloud--granting federated access to cloud resources
We describe the research undertaken in the six month JISC/EPSRC funded My Private Cloud project, in which we built a demonstration cloud file storage service that allows users to login to it, by using their existing credentials from a configured trusted identity provider. Once authenticated, users are shown a set of accounts that they are the owners of, based on their identity attributes. Once users open one of their accounts, they can upload and download files to it. Not only that, but they can then grant access to their file resources to anyone else in the federated system, regardless of whether their chosen delegate has used the cloud service before or not. The system uses standard identity management protocols, attribute based access controls, and a delegation service. A set of APIs have been defined for the authentication, authorisation and delegation processes, and the software has been released as open source to the community. A public demonstration of the system is available online
My Private Cloud Overview: A Trust, Privacy and Security Infrastructure for the Cloud
Based on the assumption that cloud providers can be trusted (to a certain extent) we define a trust, security and privacy preserving infrastructure that relies on trusted cloud providers to operate properly. Working in tandem with legal agreements, our open source software supports: trust and reputation management, sticky policies with fine grained access controls, privacy preserving delegation of authority, federated identity management, different levels of assurance and configurable audit trails. Armed with these tools, cloud service providers are then able to offer a reliable privacy preserving infrastructure-as-a-service to their clients
Contributions to the privacy provisioning for federated identity management platforms
Identity information, personal data and user’s profiles are key assets for organizations
and companies by becoming the use of identity management (IdM) infrastructures a prerequisite
for most companies, since IdM systems allow them to perform their business
transactions by sharing information and customizing services for several purposes in more
efficient and effective ways.
Due to the importance of the identity management paradigm, a lot of work has been done
so far resulting in a set of standards and specifications. According to them, under the
umbrella of the IdM paradigm a person’s digital identity can be shared, linked and reused
across different domains by allowing users simple session management, etc. In this way,
users’ information is widely collected and distributed to offer new added value services
and to enhance availability. Whereas these new services have a positive impact on users’
life, they also bring privacy problems.
To manage users’ personal data, while protecting their privacy, IdM systems are the ideal
target where to deploy privacy solutions, since they handle users’ attribute exchange.
Nevertheless, current IdM models and specifications do not sufficiently address comprehensive
privacy mechanisms or guidelines, which enable users to better control over the
use, divulging and revocation of their online identities. These are essential aspects, specially
in sensitive environments where incorrect and unsecured management of user’s data
may lead to attacks, privacy breaches, identity misuse or frauds.
Nowadays there are several approaches to IdM that have benefits and shortcomings, from
the privacy perspective.
In this thesis, the main goal is contributing to the privacy provisioning for federated
identity management platforms. And for this purpose, we propose a generic architecture
that extends current federation IdM systems. We have mainly focused our contributions
on health care environments, given their particularly sensitive nature. The two main
pillars of the proposed architecture, are the introduction of a selective privacy-enhanced
user profile management model and flexibility in revocation consent by incorporating an
event-based hybrid IdM approach, which enables to replace time constraints and explicit
revocation by activating and deactivating authorization rights according to events. The
combination of both models enables to deal with both online and offline scenarios, as well
as to empower the user role, by letting her to bring together identity information from
different sources.
Regarding user’s consent revocation, we propose an implicit revocation consent mechanism
based on events, that empowers a new concept, the sleepyhead credentials, which
is issued only once and would be used any time. Moreover, we integrate this concept
in IdM systems supporting a delegation protocol and we contribute with the definition
of mathematical model to determine event arrivals to the IdM system and how they are
managed to the corresponding entities, as well as its integration with the most widely
deployed specification, i.e., Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).
In regard to user profile management, we define a privacy-awareness user profile management
model to provide efficient selective information disclosure. With this contribution a
service provider would be able to accesses the specific personal information without being
able to inspect any other details and keeping user control of her data by controlling
who can access. The structure that we consider for the user profile storage is based on
extensions of Merkle trees allowing for hash combining that would minimize the need of
individual verification of elements along a path. An algorithm for sorting the tree as we
envision frequently accessed attributes to be closer to the root (minimizing the access’
time) is also provided.
Formal validation of the above mentioned ideas has been carried out through simulations
and the development of prototypes. Besides, dissemination activities were performed in
projects, journals and conferences.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en IngenierĂa TelemáticaPresidente: MarĂa Celeste Campo Vázquez.- Secretario: MarĂa Francisca Hinarejos Campos.- Vocal: Ă“scar Esparza MartĂ
Privacy, security, and trust issues in smart environments
Recent advances in networking, handheld computing and sensor technologies have driven forward research towards the realisation of Mark Weiser's dream of calm and ubiquitous computing (variously called pervasive computing, ambient computing, active spaces, the disappearing computer or context-aware computing). In turn, this has led to the emergence of smart environments as one significant facet of research in this domain. A smart environment, or space, is a region of the real world that is extensively equipped with sensors, actuators and computing components [1]. In effect the smart space becomes a part of a larger information system: with all actions within the space potentially affecting the underlying computer applications, which may themselves affect the space through the actuators. Such smart environments have tremendous potential within many application areas to improve the utility of a space. Consider the potential offered by a smart environment that prolongs the time an elderly or infirm person can live an independent life or the potential offered by a smart environment that supports vicarious learning
Audit-based Compliance Control (AC2) for EHR Systems
Traditionally, medical data is stored and processed using paper-based files. Recently, medical facilities have started to store, access and exchange medical data in digital form. The drivers for this change are mainly demands for cost reduction, and higher quality of health care. The main concerns when dealing with medical data are availability and confidentiality. Unavailability (even temporary) of medical data is expensive. Physicians may not be able to diagnose patients correctly, or they may have to repeat exams, adding to the overall costs of health care. In extreme cases availability of medical data can even be a matter of life or death. On the other hand, confidentiality of medical data is also important. Legislation requires medical facilities to observe the privacy of the patients, and states that patients have a final say on whether or not their medical data can be processed or not. Moreover, if physicians, or their EHR systems, are not trusted by the patients, for instance because of frequent privacy breaches, then patients may refuse to submit (correct) information, complicating the work of the physicians greatly. \ud
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In traditional data protection systems, confidentiality and availability are conflicting requirements. The more data protection methods are applied to shield data from outsiders the more likely it becomes that authorized persons will not get access to the data in time. Consider for example, a password verification service that is temporarily not available, an access pass that someone forgot to bring, and so on. In this report we discuss a novel approach to data protection, Audit-based Compliance Control (AC2), and we argue that it is particularly suited for application in EHR systems. In AC2, a-priori access control is minimized to the mere authentication of users and objects, and their basic authorizations. More complex security procedures, such as checking user compliance to policies, are performed a-posteriori by using a formal and automated auditing mechanism. To support our claim we discuss legislation concerning the processing of health records, and we formalize a scenario involving medical personnel and a basic EHR system to show how AC2 can be used in practice. \ud
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This report is based on previous work (Dekker & Etalle 2006) where we assessed the applicability of a-posteriori access control in a health care scenario. A more technically detailed article about AC2 recently appeared in the IJIS journal, where we focussed however on collaborative work environments (Cederquist, Corin, Dekker, Etalle, & Hartog, 2007). In this report we first provide background and related work before explaining the principal components of the AC2 framework. Moreover we model a detailed EHR case study to show its operation in practice. We conclude by discussing how this framework meets current trends in healthcare and by highlighting the main advantages and drawbacks of using an a-posteriori access control mechanism as opposed to more traditional access control mechanisms
Citizen Electronic Identities using TPM 2.0
Electronic Identification (eID) is becoming commonplace in several European
countries. eID is typically used to authenticate to government e-services, but
is also used for other services, such as public transit, e-banking, and
physical security access control. Typical eID tokens take the form of physical
smart cards, but successes in merging eID into phone operator SIM cards show
that eID tokens integrated into a personal device can offer better usability
compared to standalone tokens. At the same time, trusted hardware that enables
secure storage and isolated processing of sensitive data have become
commonplace both on PC platforms as well as mobile devices.
Some time ago, the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) released the version 2.0 of
the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) specification. We propose an eID architecture
based on the new, rich authorization model introduced in the TCGs TPM 2.0. The
goal of the design is to improve the overall security and usability compared to
traditional smart card-based solutions. We also provide, to the best our
knowledge, the first accessible description of the TPM 2.0 authorization model.Comment: This work is based on an earlier work: Citizen Electronic Identities
using TPM 2.0, to appear in the Proceedings of the 4th international workshop
on Trustworthy embedded devices, TrustED'14, November 3, 2014, Scottsdale,
Arizona, USA, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2666141.266614
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