Towards dynamic security perimeters for virtual collaborative networks

Rapid technological advancements capitalising on the convergence of information (middleware) and communication (network) technologies now enable open application-to-application communication and bring about the prospect of ad hoc integration of systems across organisational boundaries to support collaborations that may last for a single transaction or evolve dynamically over a longer period. Architectures for managing networks of collaborating peers in such environments face new security and trust management challenges. In this paper we will introduce the basic elements of such an architecture emphasising trust establishment, secure collaboration, distributed monitoring and performance assessment issues.