Design and administration of distributed and hierarchical information networks under partial orderings

Abstract

In this paper, we extend previous results [1] in the protection and administration of information networks under partial orderings. We summarize previous results, and extend them to cover hierarchical networks. We consider distributed hierarchical administration, show a hierarchical network, and demonstrate a provably secure communications technique in which partial orderings are used to control flow, traffic analysis is minimized, local compromise does not cause global compromise, and distributed hierarchical administration works. We show means by which trusted and untrusted computing bases may be connected to form provably secure distributed information networks under partial orderings, and a risk analysis technique which takes advantage of the POset structure to reduce the complexity of analysis for these networks. We summarize results and propose further extensions of this work.