Aspects of General Security & Trust

Abstract

Organisations increasingly engage in business collaborations with different partners in different locations. Such enterprises want to capitalise on and offer their existing internal capabilities as services to its customers. Service-oriented architectures let them do so. SOA by definition is loosely coupled, highly granular, and often widely distributed and multi-step. They can combine internal and external services. However, exposing sensitive services through an SOA gives rise to serious security concerns. In particular, it is important to rethink identity and access management. Neither aspect is a new IT management challenge but SOA amplifies them with scale and complexity. The management of user identities, their credentials and other attributes, as well as controlling their access to the business services need to be defined, managed, controlled, and enforced. Identity silos must be bridged.