One Way to patient empowerment: A proposal for an autorization model

Mestrado em Informática MédicaMaster Programme in Medical Informatic

The OAuth 2.0 Web Authorization Protocol for the Internet Addiction Bioinformatics (IABio) Database

Internet addiction (IA) has become a widespread and problematic phenomenon as smart devices pervade society. Moreover, internet gaming disorder leads to increases in social expenditures for both individuals and nations alike. Although the prevention and treatment of IA are getting more important, the diagnosis of IA remains problematic. Understanding the neurobiological mechanism of behavioral addictions is essential for the development of specific and effective treatments. Although there are many databases related to other addictions, a database for IA has not been developed yet. In addition, bioinformatics databases, especially genetic databases, require a high level of security and should be designed based on medical information standards. In this respect, our study proposes the OAuth standard protocol for database access authorization. The proposed IA Bioinformatics (IABio) database system is based on internet user authentication, which is a guideline for medical information standards, and uses OAuth 2.0 for access control technology. This study designed and developed the system requirements and configuration. The OAuth 2.0 protocol is expected to establish the security of personal medical information and be applied to genomic research on IA

Identity Management and Authorization Infrastructure in Secure Mobile Access to Electronic Health Records

We live in an age of the mobile paradigm of anytime/anywhere access, as the mobile device is the most ubiquitous device that people now hold. Due to their portability, availability, easy of use, communication, access and sharing of information within various domains and areas of our daily lives, the acceptance and adoption of these devices is still growing. However, due to their potential and raising numbers, mobile devices are a growing target for attackers and, like other technologies, mobile applications are still vulnerable. Health information systems are composed with tools and software to collect, manage, analyze and process medical information (such as electronic health records and personal health records). Therefore, such systems can empower the performance and maintenance of health services, promoting availability, readability, accessibility and data sharing of vital information about a patients overall medical history, between geographic fragmented health services. Quick access to information presents a great importance in the health sector, as it accelerates work processes, resulting in better time utilization. Additionally, it may increase the quality of care. However health information systems store and manage highly sensitive data, which raises serious concerns regarding patients privacy and safety, and may explain the still increasing number of malicious incidents reports within the health domain. Data related to health information systems are highly sensitive and subject to severe legal and regulatory restrictions, that aim to protect the individual rights and privacy of patients. Along side with these legislations, security requirements must be analyzed and measures implemented. Within the necessary security requirements to access health data, secure authentication, identity management and access control are essential to provide adequate means to protect data from unauthorized accesses. However, besides the use of simple authentication models, traditional access control models are commonly based on predefined access policies and roles, and are inflexible. This results in uniform access control decisions through people, different type of devices, environments and situational conditions, and across enterprises, location and time. Although already existent models allow to ensure the needs of the health care systems, they still lack components for dynamicity and privacy protection, which leads to not have desire levels of security and to the patient not to have a full and easy control of his privacy. Within this master thesis, after a deep research and review of the stat of art, was published a novel dynamic access control model, Socio-Technical Risk-Adaptable Access Control modEl (SoTRAACE), which can model the inherent differences and security requirements that are present in this thesis. To do this, SoTRAACE aggregates attributes from various domains to help performing a risk assessment at the moment of the request. The assessment of the risk factors identified in this work is based in a Delphi Study. A set of security experts from various domains were selected, to classify the impact in the risk assessment of each attribute that SoTRAACE aggregates. SoTRAACE was integrated in an architecture with requirements well-founded, and based in the best recommendations and standards (OWASP, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-57), as well based in deep review of the state-of-art. The architecture is further targeted with the essential security analysis and the threat model. As proof of concept, the proposed access control model was implemented within the user-centric architecture, with two mobile prototypes for several types of accesses by patients and healthcare professionals, as well the web servers that handles the access requests, authentication and identity management. The proof of concept shows that the model works as expected, with transparency, assuring privacy and data control to the user without impact for user experience and interaction. It is clear that the model can be extended to other industry domains, and new levels of risks or attributes can be added because it is modular. The architecture also works as expected, assuring secure authentication with multifactor, and secure data share/access based in SoTRAACE decisions. The communication channel that SoTRAACE uses was also protected with a digital certificate. At last, the architecture was tested within different Android versions, tested with static and dynamic analysis and with tests with security tools. Future work includes the integration of health data standards and evaluating the proposed system by collecting users’ opinion after releasing the system to real world.Hoje em dia vivemos em um paradigma móvel de acesso em qualquer lugar/hora, sendo que os dispositivos móveis são a tecnologia mais presente no dia a dia da sociedade. Devido à sua portabilidade, disponibilidade, fácil manuseamento, poder de comunicação, acesso e partilha de informação referentes a várias áreas e domínios das nossas vidas, a aceitação e integração destes dispositivos é cada vez maior. No entanto, devido ao seu potencial e aumento do número de utilizadores, os dispositivos móveis são cada vez mais alvos de ataques, e tal como outras tecnologias, aplicações móveis continuam a ser vulneráveis. Sistemas de informação de saúde são compostos por ferramentas e softwares que permitem recolher, administrar, analisar e processar informação médica (tais como documentos de saúde eletrónicos). Portanto, tais sistemas podem potencializar a performance e a manutenção dos serviços de saúde, promovendo assim a disponibilidade, acessibilidade e a partilha de dados vitais referentes ao registro médico geral dos pacientes, entre serviços e instituições que estão geograficamente fragmentadas. O rápido acesso a informações médicas apresenta uma grande importância para o setor da saúde, dado que acelera os processos de trabalho, resultando assim numa melhor eficiência na utilização do tempo e recursos. Consequentemente haverá uma melhor qualidade de tratamento. Porém os sistemas de informação de saúde armazenam e manuseiam dados bastantes sensíveis, o que levanta sérias preocupações referentes à privacidade e segurança do paciente. Assim se explica o aumento de incidentes maliciosos dentro do domínio da saúde. Os dados de saúde são altamente sensíveis e são sujeitos a severas leis e restrições regulamentares, que pretendem assegurar a proteção dos direitos e privacidade dos pacientes, salvaguardando os seus dados de saúde. Juntamente com estas legislações, requerimentos de segurança devem ser analisados e medidas implementadas. Dentro dos requerimentos necessários para aceder aos dados de saúde, uma autenticação segura, gestão de identidade e controlos de acesso são essenciais para fornecer meios adequados para a proteção de dados contra acessos não autorizados. No entanto, além do uso de modelos simples de autenticação, os modelos tradicionais de controlo de acesso são normalmente baseados em políticas de acesso e cargos pré-definidos, e são inflexíveis. Isto resulta em decisões de controlo de acesso uniformes para diferentes pessoas, tipos de dispositivo, ambientes e condições situacionais, empresas, localizações e diferentes alturas no tempo. Apesar dos modelos existentes permitirem assegurar algumas necessidades dos sistemas de saúde, ainda há escassez de componentes para accesso dinâmico e proteção de privacidade , o que resultam em níveis de segurança não satisfatórios e em o paciente não ter controlo directo e total sobre a sua privacidade e documentos de saúde. Dentro desta tese de mestrado, depois da investigação e revisão intensiva do estado da arte, foi publicado um modelo inovador de controlo de acesso, chamado SoTRAACE, que molda as diferenças de acesso inerentes e requerimentos de segurança presentes nesta tese. Para isto, o SoTRAACE agrega atributos de vários ambientes e domínios que ajudam a executar uma avaliação de riscos, no momento em que os dados são requisitados. A avaliação dos fatores de risco identificados neste trabalho são baseados num estudo de Delphi. Um conjunto de peritos de segurança de vários domínios industriais foram selecionados, para classificar o impacto de cada atributo que o SoTRAACE agrega. O SoTRAACE foi integrado numa arquitectura para acesso a dados médicos, com requerimentos bem fundados, baseados nas melhores normas e recomendações (OWASP, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-57), e em revisões intensivas do estado da arte. Esta arquitectura é posteriormente alvo de uma análise de segurança e modelos de ataque. Como prova deste conceito, o modelo de controlo de acesso proposto é implementado juntamente com uma arquitetura focada no utilizador, com dois protótipos para aplicações móveis, que providênciam vários tipos de acesso de pacientes e profissionais de saúde. A arquitetura é constituída também por servidores web que tratam da gestão de dados, controlo de acesso e autenticação e gestão de identidade. O resultado final mostra que o modelo funciona como esperado, com transparência, assegurando a privacidade e o controlo de dados para o utilizador, sem ter impacto na sua interação e experiência. Consequentemente este modelo pode-se extender para outros setores industriais, e novos níveis de risco ou atributos podem ser adicionados a este mesmo, por ser modular. A arquitetura também funciona como esperado, assegurando uma autenticação segura com multi-fator, acesso e partilha de dados segura baseado em decisões do SoTRAACE. O canal de comunicação que o SoTRAACE usa foi também protegido com um certificado digital. A arquitectura foi testada em diferentes versões de Android, e foi alvo de análise estática, dinâmica e testes com ferramentas de segurança. Para trabalho futuro está planeado a integração de normas de dados de saúde e a avaliação do sistema proposto, através da recolha de opiniões de utilizadores no mundo real

Gestion unifiée et dynamique de la sécurité : un cadriciel dirigé par les situations

Les systèmes de gestion de la sécurité (SGS) font le lien entre les exigences de sécurité et le domaine d'application technique. D'un côté, le SGS doit permettre à l'administrateur sécurité de traduire les exigences de sécurité en configurations de sécurité (appelé ici le processus de déploiement). De l'autre, il doit lui fournir des mécanismes de supervision (tels que des SIEM, IDS, fichiers de logs, etc.) afin de vérifier que l'état courant du système est toujours conforme aux exigences de sécurité (appelé ici processus de supervision). Aujourd'hui, garantir que les exigences de sécurité sont respectées nécessite une intervention humaine. En effet, les processus de déploiement et de supervision ne sont pas reliés entre eux. Ainsi, les SGS ne peuvent garantir que les exigences de sécurité sont toujours respectées lorsque le comportement du système change. Dans le cadre du projet européen PREDYKOT, nous avons tenté de boucler la boucle de gestion en intégrant les informations sur le changement de comportement du système et en les injectant dans le processus de déploiement. Cela permet de faire appliquer des mesures de sécurité dynamiques en fonction des changements de comportement du système. Toutefois, il existe diverses approches pour exprimer et mettre en œuvre des politiques de sécurité. Chaque solution de gestion est dédiée à des problématiques de gestion des autorisations ou à celles des configurations de sécurité. Chaque solution fournit son propre langage de politique, son propre modèle architectural et son propre protocole de gestion. Or, il est nécessaire de gérer à la fois les autorisations et les configurations de sécurité de manière unifiée. Notre contribution porte principalement sur trois points : Le retour d'information de supervision : Le processus de supervision capture le comportement dynamique du système au travers d'évènements. Chaque évènement transporte peu de sens. Nous proposons de considérer non pas les évènements individuellement mais de les agréger pour former des situations afin d'amener plus de sémantique sur l'état du système. Nous utilisons ce concept pour relier les exigences de sécurité, les changements dans le système et les politiques de sécurité à appliquer. Un nouvel agent, appelé gestionnaire de situations, est responsable de la gestion du cycle de vie des situations (début et fin de situation, etc.) Nous avons implanté cet agent grâce à la technologie de traitement des évènements complexes. Expression de la politique : Nous proposons d'utiliser le concept de situation comme élément central pour exprimer des politiques de sécurité dynamiques. Les décisions de sécurité peuvent être alors automatiquement dirigées par les situations sans avoir besoin de changer la règle courante. Nous appliquons l'approche de contrôle d'accès à base d'attributs pour spécifier nos politiques. Cette approche orientée par les situations facilite l'écriture des règles de sécurité mais aussi leur compréhension. De plus, ces politiques étant moins techniques, elles sont plus proches des besoins métiers. L'architecture de gestion : Nous présentons une architecture de gestion orientée événement qui supporte la mise en œuvre de politiques de sécurité dirigées par les situations. Considérer les messages de gestion en terme d'évènements, nous permet d'être indépendant de tout protocole de gestion. En conséquence, notre architecture couvre de manière unifiée les approches de gestion des autorisations comme des configurations (obligations) selon les modèles de contrôle de politiques en externalisation comme en approvisionnement. De plus, les agents de gestion sont adaptables et peuvent être dynamiquement améliorés avec de nouvelles fonctionnalités de gestion si besoin. Notre cadriciel a été complètement implanté et est conforme au standard XACMLv3 d'OASIS. Enfin, nous avons évalué la généricité de notre approche à travers quatre scénarii.A Security Management System (SMS) connects security requirements to the technical application domain. On the one hand, an SMS must allow the security administrator/officer to translate the security requirements into security configurations that is known as the enforcement process. On the other hand, it must supply the administrator/officer with monitoring features (SIEM, IDS, log files, etc.) to verify that the environments' changes do not affect the compliance to the predefined security requirements known as the monitoring process. Nowadays, guarantying security objectives requires a human intervention. Therefore, the SMS enforcement process is disconnected from the monitoring process. Thus, an SMS cannot dynamically guarantee that security requirements are still satisfied when environment behavior changings are observed. As part of the European project PREDYKOT, we have worked on closing the management loop by establishing a feedback on the dynamic behavior, captured from the environment, to impact the enforcement process. As a result, expressing and applying a dynamic security policy will be possible. However, many policy expression and enforcement approaches exist currently. Each security management solution is dedicated to some specific issues related to authorization or to system/network management. Each solution provides a specific policy language, an architectural model and a management protocol. Nevertheless, closing the management loop implies managing both authorizations and system/network configurations in a unified framework. Our contribution tackles the following three main issues: Feedback: The monitoring process captures the highly dynamics of the behavior through events. However, each event is not semantically associated with other events. We propose to get more semantics about behavior's changings thus introducing the concept of "situation" to be dealt with in security management applications. This concept aggregates events and links relevant security requirements, relevant behavior changes, and relevant policy rules. A new management agent, called the situation manager, has been added. The latter is responsible for the management process of the situations lifecycle (situation beginning and ending, etc.). We implement this software module using the complex event processing technology. Policy Expression: We propose to specify dynamic security policies oriented by situations. By doing so, the expression of the security policy rules becomes simpler to understand, easier to write and closer to the business and security needs. Hence, each relevant situation orients automatically the policy evaluation process towards a new dynamic decision that doesn't require updating the policy rules. We apply the attribute-based expression approach because of its ability to represent everything through attribute terms, which is a flexible way to express our dynamic policy rules. Enforcement Architecture: we propose a unified and adaptive architecture that supports situations-oriented policies enforcement. We choose to build an event-driven architecture. Exchanging management messages in terms of events allows our architecture to be independent from the management protocols. Thus, it covers in a unified way authorizations as well as configurations management approaches considering both provisioning and outsourcing policy control models. In addition, management agents are adaptable and can be upgraded dynamically with new management functionalities. Our framework has been implemented and is compliant with the OASIS XACMLv3 standard. Finally, we evaluated our contributed according to four different scenarios to prove its generic nature