A Distributed Certificate Management System (DCMS) Supporting Group-Based Access Controls

Mainly for scalability reasons, many cryptographic security protocols make use of public key cryptography and require the existence of a corresponding public key infrastructure (PKI). A PKI, in turn, consists of one or several certification authorities (CAs) that issue and revoke certificates for users and other CAs. Contrary to its conceptual simplicity, the establishment and operational maintenance of a CA or PKI has turned out to be difficult in practice. As a viable alternative, this paper proposes an architecture for a distributed certificate management system (DCMS) that can also be used to provide support for group-based access controls. The architecture has been prototyped and is being used by the Swiss Federal Strategy Unit for Information Technology (FSUIT) to protect access to intranet resources.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ACSAC
• Authors: Rolf Oppliger, Andreas Greulich, Peter Trachsel
• Keywords: ACSAC 1999, Cryptographic Security Protocols, Public Key, Public Key Cryptography, Security Privacy