Abstract: A method is presented in which federated domains interact within a federated environment. Domains within a federation can initiate federated single-sign-on operations for a user at other federated domains. A point-of-contact server within a domain relies upon a trust proxy within the domain to manage trust relationships between the domain and the federation. Trust proxies interpret assertions from other federated domains as necessary. Trust proxies may have a trust relationship with one or more trust brokers, and a trust proxy may rely upon a trust broker for assistance in interpreting assertions.

Abstract: A distributed trust infrastructure is presented that interfaces disparate trust models across trust domain boundaries and manages inter-domain and intra-domain trust relationships such that they are not reliant upon a single trust manager entity. A trust relationship between trust domains is represented by a trust link, which associates a namespace with a trust oracle, which is a service in a trust domain given responsibility to authoritatively resolve trust-related operations relative to the associated namespace. Trust links for a given trust domain are used by a trust link reference agent that is supported within the trust domain. The trust link reference agent is consulted for trust-related operations within its trust domain; after identifying the appropriate trust oracle for handling the trust-related operation, the trust-related operation is forwarded to the trust oracle for resolution. In addition, the trust links are associated with policies that guide the management of the trust links.

Abstract: A method is presented in which federated domains interact within a federated environment. Domains within a federation can initiate federated single-sign-on operations for a user at other federated domains. A point-of-contact server within a domain relies upon a trust proxy within the domain to manage trust relationships between the domain and the federation. Trust proxies interpret assertions from other federated domains as necessary. Trust proxies may have a trust relationship with one or more trust brokers, and a trust proxy may rely upon a trust broker for assistance in interpreting assertions. When a user requests to logoff from a domain that has initiated federated single-sign-on operations for the user at other federated domains, the domain initiates a consolidated logoff operation by requesting logoff operations at those other federated domains, which may also initiate logoff operations in a cascaded fashion to the domains at which they have initiated federated single-sign-on operations.

Abstract: A method is presented in which federated domains interact within a federated environment. Domains within a federation can initiate federated single-sign-on operations for a user at other federated domains. A point-of-contact server within a domain relies upon a trust proxy within the domain to manage trust relationships between the domain and the federation. Trust proxies interpret assertions from other federated domains as necessary. Trust proxies may have a trust relationship with one or more trust brokers, and a trust proxy may rely upon a trust broker for assistance in interpreting assertions.

Abstract: A method, system, apparatus, or computer program product is presented for routing event messages between data processing systems based on privacy policies associated with the data processing systems and based on event policies associated with event types for the event messages. When a system attempts to publish an event message for a particular type of event or to subscribe to those event messages, an event policy is checked to determine whether the system may publish messages for that type of event or may subscribe to those messages. Moreover, if a publishing system publishes an event message that contains personally identifiable information for a user of a data processing system, and a subscribing system has subscribed to event messages having the same event type, then the privacy policies associated with the systems are compared to determine compatibility or incompatibility between the privacy policies before routing a message between the systems.

Abstract: A pluggable trust adapter architecture that accommodates a plurality of interceptors is provided. Each interceptor is adapted to perform security processing of communications having a specific protocol. Specifically, when a communication is received, it will be routed from a channel router to a specific interceptor based on the protocol of the communication. The interceptor will then “security” process the communication (e.g., extract data, perform verification, etc.). Once the interceptor has processed the communication, the extracted data and the communication itself will be passed to an authorization system for authorization.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for automatically determining optimum placement of privileged code enablement locations in existing code are provided. With the apparatus and method, a method invocation graph of existing code is generated and a static analysis of the method invocation graph is performed. The static analysis is used to analyze the permission propagation through chains of method invocations in the method invocation graph. When a method invocation in the method invocation graph satisfies one or more user definable criteria, the location in the method invocation graph is save to a file that identifies recommended insertion points for a call to the authorization enablement code. A default criteria for insertion of a call to authorization enablement is the boundary between application code and API code.

Abstract: A method for securing cached data in an enterprise environment. The method can include processing a request to locate data in a query cache. If the data can be located in the query cache, the data can be retrieved from the query cache. Additionally, at least one encrypted portion of the retrieved data can be decrypted. Finally, the decrypted portion and any remaining unencrypted portion of the retrieved data can be forwarded to a requesting client. By comparison, if the data cannot be located in the query cache, the data can be retrieved from a back-end data source over a computer communications network, and forwarded to the requesting client. Additionally, at least a portion of the retrieved data can be encrypted and both the encrypted portion and any remaining unencrypted portion can be stored in the query cache.

Abstract: A software security system is arranged to verify the authenticity of each element of a Java Virtual Machine installation. A digital signature is attached to each file of the JVM installation. A loader (20) verifies the digital signature of the JVM DLL (30). The JVM DLL 30 then verifies the digital signature of each other DLL and configuration file to be loaded (40, 50, 60, 70), and only loads those files which have successfully verified digital signatures. In this way the security of the JVM is enhanced, a user has greater confidence that the Java applications will function correctly, and the detection of incorrect or damaged JVM installations is improved.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for type independent permission based access control are provided. The method and apparatus utilize object inheritance to provide a mechanism by which a large group of permissions may be assigned to a codesource without having to explicitly assign each individual permission to the codesource. A base permission, or superclass permission, is defined along with inherited, or subclass, permissions that fall below the base permission in a hierarchy of permissions. Having defined the permissions in such a hierarchy, a developer may assign a base permission to an installed class and thereby assign all of the inherited permissions of the base permission to the installed class. In this way, security providers need not know all the permission types defined in an application. In addition, security providers can seamlessly integrate with many applications without changing their access control and policy store semantics.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for type independent permission based access control are provided. The method and apparatus utilize object inheritance to provide a mechanism by which a large group of permissions may be assigned to a codesource without having to explicitly assign each individual permission to the codesource. A base permission, or superclass permission, is defined along with inherited, or subclass, permissions that fall below the base permission in a hierarchy of permissions. Having defined the permissions in such a hierarchy, a developer may assign a base permission to an installed class and thereby assign all of the inherited permissions of the base permission to the installed class. In this way, security providers need not know all the permission types defined in an application. In addition, security providers can seamlessly integrate with many applications without changing their access control and policy store semantics.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products are disclosed for protecting the security of resources in distributed computing environments. The disclosed techniques improve administration and enforcement of security policies. Allowed actions on resources, also called permissions, (such as invocations of particular methods, read or write access of a particular row or perhaps a particular column in a database table, and so forth) are grouped, and each group of permissions is associated with a role name. A particular action on a particular resource may be specified in more than one group, and therefore may be associated with more than one role. Each role is administered as a security object. Users and/or user groups may be associated with one or more roles. At run-time, access to a resource is protected by determining whether the invoking user has been associated with (granted) at least one of the roles required for this type of access on this resource.

Abstract: Various aspects of the invention may be found in software that performs mutual authentication between a plurality of interconnected software module. The modules contain security tools that allow for the verifying, authenticating, and/or authorizing of a caller module and an invoked module. Before a caller module invokes another module, the caller performs functions that verify, authenticate, and/or authorize the invoked module. Upon success, the module is invoked. However, upon failure, the module is not invoked. In one case, the calling class uses embedded certificates or keys relating to the invoked class. Upon a possibility of invoking the class, the calling module obtains a digitally signed codebase of the invoked class, and verifies, authenticates, and/or authorizes the code based upon the signature and/or the characteristics of the certificate. Conversely, the invoked class performs similar functionality upon being invoked.

Abstract: A methodology is presented for securely acquiring and managing PKI credentials using an enterprise's pre-existing information technology. A management application places user information from a directory into a pre-registration record, which is sent to the user as an e-mail attachment. When the user views the e-mail message through a browser-type application that has built-in key generation and digital certificate management, the user may be prompted for additional information, such as passwords. The browser-type application then generates a public/private key pair and stores the private key in a secure local keystore while also securely sending the public key, authentication data, and pre-registration record to a registration/certificate authority. A public key certificate and an attribute certificate are then issued for the user, copies of which are published into the directory and returned to the user for storing within the user's secure local keystore. The certificates may then be used in typical manners.

Abstract: A architecture for implementing PKI technology is described. Individual processing modules responsive to events are initiated. These individual software module building blocks, or “beans” are placed and linked together in an assembly line-like manner. Each bean is responsive to particular events and does one particular action in the scheme. For example, individual beans are responsive to different format PKI requests from a network, and in turn generate an event corresponding to that request. The event is broadcast to other beans that take the event and perform some other operation in the defined process. Other beans include certificate generators, publishers, manipulators, broadcasters to output streams, and also beans that can act as boolean branches. When strung together, the beans form a cohesive PKI schema. The ability to place beans in the flow and remove them allows great flexibility in developing PKI implementations.

Abstract: A architecture for implementing PKI technology is described. Individual processing modules responsive to events are initiated. These individual software module building blocks, or “beans” are placed and linked together in an assembly line-like manner. Each bean is responsive to particular events and does one particular action in the scheme. For example, individual beans are responsive to different format PKI requests from a network, and in turn generate an event corresponding to that request. The event is broadcast to other beans that take the event and perform some other operation in the defined process. Other beans include certificate generators, publishers, manipulators, broadcasters to output streams, and also beans that can act as boolean branches. When strung together, the beans form a cohesive PKI schema. The ability to place beans in the flow and remove them allows great flexibility in developing PKI implementations.

Abstract: A architecture for implementing PKI technology is described. Individual processing modules responsive to events are initiated. These individual software module building blocks, or “beans” are placed and linked together in an assembly line-like manner. Each bean is responsive to particular events and does one particular action in the scheme. For example, individual beans are responsive to different format PKI requests from a network, and in turn generate an event corresponding to that request. The event is broadcast to other beans that take the event and perform some other operation in the defined process. Other beans include certificate generators, publishers, manipulators, broadcasters to output streams, and also beans that can act as boolean branches. When strung together, the beans form a cohesive PKI schema. The ability to place beans in the flow and remove them allows great flexibility in developing PKI implementations.

Abstract: The present invention discloses an architecture that enables anonymous electronic voting over the Internet using public key technologies. This invention provides a simple yet robust architecture for electronic voting over the unsecured network that is the Internet, using the public and private key pair belonging to the voting entity, not a separate userid and password for each election. In the voting method of the present invention, a voting entity requests a ballot using a public key and a private key belonging to the voting entity. The request is made to a voting mediator. Using a separate public key/private key pair, the voting mediator validates the voting ballot request. After validation of the request, the voting mediator generates an election ballot. The voting mediator sends this ballot to the voting entity. The voting entity casts a vote and sends the ballot to the voting tabulator. The voting tabulator authenticates the ballot and counts the vote.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method, apparatus, and computer implemented instructions for executing cryptographic operations. Responsive to a request to perform a cryptographic operation, one (or more) of a software process and a hardware process is selected for performing the cryptographic operation based on a policy which process results in a available resources to perform the cryptographic operation to form a selected process. The cryptographic operation is performed using the selected process. Necessary object conversions, which is transparent to the application, is carried out in order to convert objects to usable forms of the selected process (es).

Abstract: A system, method and article of manufacture for integrating object security service authorization in a distributed computing environment, includes one or more processors, a storage system, a system bus, a display sub-system controlling a display device, a cursor control device, an I/O controller for controlling I/O devices, all connected by system bus an operating system such as the OS/2* operating system program (OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation), one or more application programs for executing user tasks and an object oriented control program, such as, DSOM Objects program, which is a commercially available product of International Business Machines Corporation, the object oriented control program including mapping a set of methods defined by a given class to a finite and a fixed set of access rights from which a method required access rights set is assigned, and selecting the access rights set by examining two components, first, a family right type and, second, a