Towards authorisation models for secure information sharing : a survey and research agenda

This article presents a survey of authorisation models and considers their ‘fitness-for-purpose’ in facilitating information sharing. Network-supported information sharing is an important technical capability that underpins collaboration in support of dynamic and unpredictable activities such as emergency response, national security, infrastructure protection, supply chain integration and emerging business models based on the concept of a ‘virtual organisation’. The article argues that present authorisation models are inflexible and poorly scalable in such dynamic environments due to their assumption that the future needs of the system can be predicted, which in turn justifies the use of persistent authorisation policies. The article outlines the motivation and requirement for a new flexible authorisation model that addresses the needs of information sharing. It proposes that a flexible and scalable authorisation model must allow an explicit specification of the objectives of the system and access decisions must be made based on a late trade-off analysis between these explicit objectives. A research agenda for the proposed Objective-based Access Control concept is presented.

Security of employee entitlements : corporate governance issues

Following the collapse across the last decade of a number of large organizations such as Enron in the USA and several domestic organizations including Ansett Airlines, HIH Insurance and One.Tel, much discussion has ensued about the need to secure employee entitlements. However, tangible improvements in this area are elusive. Good corporate governance policies would suggest that deferred obligations as well as current debts should not be neglected and that appropriate arrangements be put in place to adequately fund employee entitlements. In this paper we consider recent Australian attempts to introduce better governance of employee entitlements.

Community food security gaps in surveillance and monitoring

This paper describes the gaps in monitoring and surveillance identified while conducting Community Food Security assessments in three geographical areas located in south-east Queensland, Australia

Fraud detection in ERP systems using scenario matching

ERP systems generally implement controls to prevent certain common kinds of fraud. In addition however, there is an imperative need for detection of more sophisticated patterns of fraudulent activity as evidenced by the legal requirement for company audits and the common incidence of fraud. This paper describes the design and implementation of a framework for detecting patterns of fraudulent activity in ERP systems. We include the description of six fraud scenarios and the process of specifying and detecting the occurrence of those scenarios in ERP user log data using the prototype software which we have developed. The test results for detecting these scenarios in log data have been verified and confirm the success of our approach which can be generalized to ERP systems in general.

The implementation of a novel, bio-inspired, robotic security system

The implementation of a robotic security solution generally requires one algorithm to route the robot around the environment and another algorithm to perform anomaly detection. Solutions to the routing problem require the robot to have a good estimate of its own pose. We present a novel security system that uses metrics generated by the localisation algorithm to perform adaptive anomaly detection. The localisation algorithm is a vision-based SLAM solution called RatSLAM, based on mechanisms within the hippocampus. The anomaly detection algorithm is based on the mechanisms used by the immune system to identify threats to the body. The system is explored using data gathered within an unmodified office environment. It is shown that the algorithm successfully reacts to the presence of people and objects in areas where they are not usually present and is tolerised against the presence of people in environments that are usually dynamic.

Performance analysis of unified enterprise application security framework

Unified Enterprise application security is a new emerging approach for providing protection against application level attacks. Conventional application security approach that consists of embedding security into each critical application leads towards scattered security mechanism that is not only difficult to manage but also creates security loopholes. According to the CSIIFBI computer crime survey report, almost 80% of the security breaches come from authorized users. In this paper, we have worked on the concept of unified security model, which manages all security aspect from a single security window. The basic idea is to keep business functionality separate from security components of the application. Our main focus was on the designing of frame work for unified layer which supports single point of policy control, centralize logging mechanism, granular, context aware access control, and independent from any underlying authentication technology and authorization policy.

Generic one round group key exchange in the standard model

Minimizing complexity of group key exchange (GKE) protocols is an important milestone towards their practical deployment. An interesting approach to achieve this goal is to simplify the design of GKE protocols by using generic building blocks. In this paper we investigate the possibility of founding GKE protocols based on a primitive called multi key encapsulation mechanism (mKEM) and describe advantages and limitations of this approach. In particular, we show how to design a one-round GKE protocol which satisfies the classical requirement of authenticated key exchange (AKE) security, yet without forward secrecy. As a result, we obtain the first one-round GKE protocol secure in the standard model. We also conduct our analysis using recent formal models that take into account both outsider and insider attacks as well as the notion of key compromise impersonation resilience (KCIR). In contrast to previous models we show how to model both outsider and insider KCIR within the definition of mutual authentication. Our analysis additionally implies that the insider security compiler by Katz and Shin from ACM CCS 2005 can be used to achieve more than what is shown in the original work, namely both outsider and insider KCIR.

Legislative and security requirements of audit material for evidentiary purpose

This research used the Queensland Police Service, Australia, as a major case study. Information on principles, techniques and processes used, and the reason for the recording, storing and release of audit information for evidentiary purposes is reported. It is shown that Law Enforcement Agencies have a two-fold interest in, and legal obligation pertaining to, audit trails. The first interest relates to the situation where audit trails are actually used by criminals in the commission of crime and the second to where audit trails are generated by the information systems used by the police themselves in support of the recording and investigation of crime. Eleven court cases involving Queensland Police Service audit trails used in evidence in Queensland courts were selected for further analysis. It is shown that, of the cases studied, none of the evidence presented was rejected or seriously challenged from a technical perspective. These results were further analysed and related to normal requirements for trusted maintenance of audit trail information in sensitive environments with discussion on the ability and/or willingness of courts to fully challenge, assess or value audit evidence presented. Managerial and technical frameworks for firstly what is considered as an environment where a computer system may be considered to be operating “properly” and, secondly, what aspects of education, training, qualifications, expertise and the like may be considered as appropriate for persons responsible within that environment, are both proposed. Analysis was undertaken to determine if audit and control of information in a high security environment, such as law enforcement, could be judged as having improved, or not, in the transition from manual to electronic processes. Information collection, control of processing and audit in manual processes used by the Queensland Police Service, Australia, in the period 1940 to 1980 was assessed against current electronic systems essentially introduced to policing in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Results show that electronic systems do provide for faster communications with centrally controlled and updated information readily available for use by large numbers of users who are connected across significant geographical locations. However, it is clearly evident that the price paid for this is a lack of ability and/or reluctance to provide improved audit and control processes. To compare the information systems audit and control arrangements of the Queensland Police Service with other government departments or agencies, an Australia wide survey was conducted. Results of the survey were contrasted with the particular results of a survey, conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Privacy Commission four years previous, to this survey which showed that security in relation to the recording of activity against access to information held on Australian government computer systems has been poor and a cause for concern. However, within this four year period there is evidence to suggest that government organisations are increasingly more inclined to generate audit trails. An attack on the overall security of audit trails in computer operating systems was initiated to further investigate findings reported in relation to the government systems survey. The survey showed that information systems audit trails in Microsoft Corporation's “Windows” operating system environments are relied on quite heavily. An audit of the security for audit trails generated, stored and managed in the Microsoft “Windows 2000” operating system environment was undertaken and compared and contrasted with similar such audit trail schemes in the “UNIX” and “Linux” operating systems. Strength of passwords and exploitation of any security problems in access control were targeted using software tools that are freely available in the public domain. Results showed that such security for the “Windows 2000” system is seriously flawed and the integrity of audit trails stored within these environments cannot be relied upon. An attempt to produce a framework and set of guidelines for use by expert witnesses in the information technology (IT) profession is proposed. This is achieved by examining the current rules and guidelines related to the provision of expert evidence in a court environment, by analysing the rationale for the separation of distinct disciplines and corresponding bodies of knowledge used by the Medical Profession and Forensic Science and then by analysing the bodies of knowledge within the discipline of IT itself. It is demonstrated that the accepted processes and procedures relevant to expert witnessing in a court environment are transferable to the IT sector. However, unlike some discipline areas, this analysis has clearly identified two distinct aspects of the matter which appear particularly relevant to IT. These two areas are; expertise gained through the application of IT to information needs in a particular public or private enterprise; and expertise gained through accepted and verifiable education, training and experience in fundamental IT products and system.