The emergence of high-speed networks, Grid Computing, Service-Oriented Architectures, and an ever increasing ambient connection to mobile Internet has provided an underpinning infrastructure for the development of dynamically formed, collaborative, distributed working groups known as Virtual Organisations (VOs). The growth in number of VOs combined with the sensitivity of information processed by some VOs provides strong motivation for investigation into the infrastructure; particularly the security necessary to protect the information and resources shared within a VO, both while resident on local machines and when allowed to move beyond the secure boundary of a local organisational network perimeter and into the realm of the distributed VO.

Self Protecting Information for Deperimeterised Electronic Relationships (SPIDER)

Project The Final Report is available here

Aims and objectives

Current access control technology protects information at the file level. The aim of this project is to analyse currents methods and tools used to protect information, and to produce a mechanism for the secure sharing of information at a finer level of granularity than is currently possible. As such, this will create a contribution of understanding and solution to both the academic and commercial research and development and collaborative working communities in line with the e-Research Federated Tools and services theme of the JISC call, meeting the anticipated outcomes of a broader and more effective understanding and use of e-Infrastructure with enhanced security. Being a Welsh establishment it is also important to us that we assist in the promotion of research capacity and development of technologies for e-Research as defined by the Welsh Assembly Government’s strategy for the HE sector.

Project methodology

The first task is to research and analyse the associated risks for information sharing in collaborative distributed environments using some sample medical research data made available from the initial research of the CU led PET Scanner project, scheduled to be completed in 2009.

Following on from this, a set of requirements based on the risk assessment will be derived and used to implement a solution that considers these requirements, using stable open standards where appropriate, in order to provide a solution that better suits the widely distributed, expanding perimeter environments that are rapidly emerging through the adoption of VOs and collaborative working.

A third task is to improve the understanding of the collaborative working community as to how information exchange could be greatly improved by providing much finer grained access controls.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

The outcome of the project will be:

  • Conference and Journal papers publishing the results of the project
  • A requirements specification for access control technology in VO research environments
  • A definition of a VO security system architecture
  • A software implementation of the proposed system architecture for demonstration and dissemination.

Technology/ Standards used

Open source tools and standards where possible 

Lead institution

Project Staff

Project Manager
Project Team

Documents & Multimedia

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