Secure collaboration environments in a service oriented architecture

Abstract

Reliable, secure and verifiable data sharing and exchange over the Internet has become a very important need, especially in the face of privacy regulations that have been enacted by governments. Sensitive data must be well managed when there is collaboration between individuals and organizations. This thesis investigates some collaboration models and systems; identifies several security and privacy issues in sharing sensitive data within a collaborative system; and proposes a Web-based and Web service-oriented approach to enable collaboration over the Internet while protecting and enabling the sharing of sensitive data. The proposed solution takes advantage of both service oriented architecture (SOA) and Web service, combining multiple access control strategies to share and protect sensitive data within a secure, flexible and scalable collaborative environment. The proposed framework is illustrated in the context of a collaborative online medical consultation system with sensitive data sharing. The collaborative online medical consultation system is developed with SOA, which integrated several collaboration Web services and security Web services.