Abstract:

The proliferation of different distributed systems platforms and security technologies complicates the integration of distributed applications. Model driven software development tries to tackle this problem by modelling the application logic undistorted by technology and using tools to map the model to the particular technology. Distributed systems security faces a similar challenge in that there are many different platforms and security technologies that need to be integrated.

This talk will present our new security framework. Its central part is the policy repository, which stores the platform-independent security policy. Once the framework is integrated, the mapping from the abstract policy to the concrete enforcement, as well as the translation of technology specific security information into abstract security attributes is automatic. We will illustrate our approach using our prototype implementation and an exemplary integration with the CORBA Component Model, which are currently being implemented as part of an EU-IST research project.

Speaker:

Ulrich Lang is co-founder and research director of ObjectSecurity Ltd., a leading IT security specialist company. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (Security Group, Computer Laboratory) in 2003. His dissertation was about conceptual aspects of security policies for middleware. Before that he completed a Master's Degree (M.Sc.) in Information Security at the University of London in 1997, after studying computer science with management at the University of Munich and at Royal Holloway College (University of London). After his M.Sc. graduation, he worked as an independent security consultant on various CORBA based banking projects. He is the author of a book on Developing Secure Distributed Systems with CORBA, various articles in journals and several publications at international conferences and workshops.