Context-sensitive confidentiality within federated environments
First Claim
1. A method of achieving context-sensitive confidentiality among security domains within a federated environment, the method comprising steps of:
- determining a route to be taken by a message to be transmitted in the federated environment, where the route spans a plurality of the security domains;
determining rights of nodes to be encountered on the determined route to access security-sensitive portions of the message;
selectively protecting the security-sensitive portions of the message, according to the determined access rights; and
transmitting the message with its selectively-protected portions on the determined route.
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Abstract
Techniques are disclosed for achieving context-sensitive confidentiality within a federated environment for which content is aggregated in a distributed Web portal (or similar aggregation framework), ensuring that message portions that should be confidential are confidential to all entities in the federated environment except those entities to which the message portions may properly be divulged. The federation may comprise an arbitrary number of autonomous security domains, and these security domains may have independent trust models and authentication services. Using the disclosed techniques, messages can be routed securely within a cross-domain federation (irrespective of routing paths), thereby ensuring that confidential information is not exposed to unintended third parties and that critical information is not tampered with while in transit between security domains. Preferred embodiments leverage Web services techniques and a number of industry standards.
148 Citations
21 Claims
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1. A method of achieving context-sensitive confidentiality among security domains within a federated environment, the method comprising steps of:
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determining a route to be taken by a message to be transmitted in the federated environment, where the route spans a plurality of the security domains;
determining rights of nodes to be encountered on the determined route to access security-sensitive portions of the message;
selectively protecting the security-sensitive portions of the message, according to the determined access rights; and
transmitting the message with its selectively-protected portions on the determined route. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A system for achieving context-sensitive confidentiality among security domains within a federated environment, the system comprising:
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means for determining a route to be taken by a message to be transmitted in the federated environment, where the route spans a plurality of the security domains;
means for determining rights of nodes to be encountered on the determined route to access security-sensitive portions of the message;
means for selectively protecting the security-sensitive portions of the message, according to the determined access rights; and
means for transmitting the message with its selectively-protected portions on the determined route.
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18. A computer program product for securely transmitting context-sensitive confidential message content among security domains within a federated environment, the computer program product embodied on one or more computer-readable media and comprising:
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computer-readable program code means for determining a route to be taken by a message to be transmitted in the federated environment, where the route spans a plurality of the security domains;
computer-readable program code means for determining rights of nodes to be encountered on the determined route to access security-sensitive portions of the message;
computer-readable program code means for selectively protecting the security-sensitive portions of the message, according to the determined access rights; and
computer-readable program code means for transmitting the message with its selectively-protected portions on the determined route.
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19. A method of providing a message confidentiality service for securely transmitting messages among security domains within a federated environment, the method comprising steps of:
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determining a route to be taken by a message to be transmitted in the federated environment, where the route spans a plurality of the security domains;
determining rights of nodes to be encountered on the determined route to access security-sensitive portions of the message; and
determining how the security-sensitive portions of the message should be protected, according to the determined access rights.
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- 20. The method according to claim 20, further comprising the step of charging a fee for one or more of the determining steps.
Specification