Context-aware security strategies for the virtual office of the future

Future office environments as the Virtual Office of the Future (VoF) are characterized by service-orientation and context-awareness. Mostly they will be accessed by mobile users. Hence, new security challenges arise. Especially, it is necessary to strengthen security measures and to minimize the security relevant user interactions at the same time. Consequently, the goals of security are defined as the security properties. These are confidentiality, integrity, accountability and availability. In addition, existing context-aware security approaches are surveyed and their disadvantages in VoF settings are pointed out. Subsequently, an adjustable, contextaware security concept is presented. This high-level concept focuses on the attainment of the security properties and allows adaptive security measures. Security requirements are defined at a service type level, whereas the mechanisms for realization are specified organization wide. Additionally, context-information is able to tighten or mitigate security measures. Then the concept is used as input to design a security component. Besides this component the additionally necessary components are specified. The provided design is done technology independent. To proof the concept a reference implementation is developed using OSGi. This implementation then is integrated to the MFP-Prototype by the help of aspect-oriented programming techniques