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
