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Professor of Information Systems Security awarded €942,534 for major EU project

David Chadwick, Professor of Information Systems Security at the Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, has been awarded €942,534 for his participation in the EC funded project Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services (TAS3).

The University of Kent is one of 18 partners from across Europe being funded on this four-year €9,400,000 project, the main aim of which is to develop and implement a dependable, robust, cost-effective, reliable and cross-domain trustworthy architecture for web-based services. Two application domains that will be used as exemplars are the e-health and employability sectors. This development will allow users and service providers in these sectors to manage the lifelong generated personal information of the individuals involved e.g. within the employability sector, lifelong personal information such as career history and professional interests could be used to propose future career paths that are compatible with an individual's ambitions.

Professor Chadwick's role in TAS3 is to develop and manage a core technical component titled Identity Management and Authorisation and Authentication. Its function is to ensure that users of the TAS3 infrastructure are properly authenticated and authorised before they are granted access to the personal information they have requested.

Professor Chadwick explained: 'Utilising the Identity Management and Authorisation and Authentication component, users will be able to set their own policies for who should be allowed to access their own personal information, and the infrastructure will make sure that their policies, as well as legal requirements and practices, are adhered to.

'However, in emergency situations, the normal policies will be allowed to be overridden, through what we term 'Break the Glass' policies. For example, if a person is unconscious in an emergency accident unit and the staff on duty need to see all of that person's medical data, even though they would not normally be allowed to see some of it, with 'Break the Glass' they will be allowed to see it. Of course, they will need to explain later why they chose to 'Break the Glass', and anyone who wrongly chose to do so will then be subject to normal disciplinary procedures.'

The Identity Management and Authorisation and Authentication component is being implemented in phases throughout the four year project, and the first phase will be completed by the end of 2008.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 12:05pm 17 March 2008