Security architecture for sensitive information systems

Protecting sensitive information is a growing concern around the globe. Securing critical data in all sectors, including the business, healthcare and military sectors, has become the first priority of sensitive information management. Failing to protect this asset results in high costs and, more importantly, can also result in lost customers and investor confidence and even threaten national security. Sensitive information systems consist of three major components: communication channel, user interface and sensitive information storage; the protection of these three components equates to the protection of sensitive information itself. Previous research in this area has been limited due to the employment of long-term shared keys and public keys. Currently, no complete security solution exists to help protect sensitive information in the three components. Issues such as dynamic sensitive information ownership, group authentication and authorization and privacy protection also create challenges for the protection of sensitive information systems. The research described in this thesis is based on dynamic key theory and group key theory to present a novel security architecture to enable sensitive information systems to overcome these challenges and meet the desired security goals for the three major components. The proposed security architecture consists of dynamic key management, user-oriented group key management, authentication and authorization management and sensitive information management, which guarantee the security of the three major components of sensitive information systems. Because of the lack of the assessment properties of information security models, a new sensitive information security model is also presented in this thesis to evaluate the effectiveness of security architecture. This model proves that the security architecture satisfies the security goals. It can also be used to assess other security architectures, and thus makes a valuable contribution to the field of sensitive information systems security. In summary, the proposed security architecture offers unique features necessary for the security of sensitive information systems. It also overcomes the limitations associated with existing security approaches and enables the complete protection of the three major components of sensitive information systems.