Clean-Slate Security-Driven Architecture Workshop and Information Session

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Among the activities in CISE/CNS related to security are Trustworthy Computing (TC) , and Future Internet Design (FIND). For the former, one of the five emphasis areas declared in the TC solicitation is Security Architecture. For the latter, one of the objectives of the NSF activity towards a future Internet is security. GA Tech. proposes to run two related workshops: the first on Security-Driven Architecture (SDA) and the second an information meeting in connection with future directions for FIND towards research on architectures wherein one of the design objectives is security. This award, co-funded by NSF and DARPA, is providing travel expenses attendant to two workshops, which took place July 28-29, 2009 in Arlington, VA. The first workshop, called Secure-Driven Architecture (SDA) is driven by the possibility of redesigning systems (hosts, networks, applications) to be secure from the start; this is in contrast with the current industry practice of patching systems when vulnerabilities are discovered (mostly by attackers) and with the current research practice of studying ?point? solutions that address particular security issues. The premise of the workshop is that by starting from scratch it could be possible to design a system far more secure than is promised by the current research. The workshop is organized into the following six sessions: 1. Multi-faceted architecture, which considers new design paradigms 2. Cryptography as an enabler of security through a system 3. Network security, where the intention is to secure the network and for the network to help mitigate attacks on end-points. 4. Host security 5. Formal methods and other mostly theoretical concepts in support of security 6. Wrap-up and next steps. The second workshop, concerned with New Directions in Networking, had as its purpose informing the community of new opportunities for the funding of substantial projects to design new network architectures where security is one of several objectives. The opportunities would be an expansion of NSF?s current FIND (Future Internet Design) activity towards actual architectures. Through the discussions of the workshop, a follow-on meeting, called a Summit, is planned wherein actual architectures would be presented and evaluated.