CSIRO’s technology underpinning trusted multiparty dynamic collaborative environments.

CSIRO technology underpinning trusted, secure, multiparty collaborative environments

CSIRO is developing communication standards and an integrated set of technologies to allow many parties to work together over a computer network.

• 5 July 2011 | Updated 17 October 2011

• The issue
• Current activities
• Outcomes
• Partners

CSIRO is developing a system that will underpin the provision of trusted and secure multiparty dynamic virtual collaborative environments.

The issue

Organisations and individuals are increasingly involved in solving problems so complex that they cannot be resourced by a single party. This means collaborating, often with multiple parties.

When different parties collaborate across a computer network, each naturally brings their own resources such as computers, data storage and network infrastructure.

These resources are likely to be subject to different − possibly conflicting − policies regarding their use, not to mention problems of interoperability.

Before the collaboration, potential participants need to agree on:

• authorisation of parties wanting to join the collaboration
• how visible resources will be to other parties
• the level of access other parties will have to the resources.

Existing systems and standards to solve these problems have drawbacks including:

• being built for specific resources only
• using manual or ad-hoc approaches
• applying to a limited number of parties (often just two)
• not being scalable to include many parties.

Current activities

CSIRO’s experts in information and communication technologies (ICT) are developing a computer-based collaboration system that is:

• trusted (each party in the collaboration has confidence in the identity of each other)
• secure (the collaboration can't be eavesdropped on or hacked into)
• dynamic
• usable by multiple parties.

  CSIRO is developing a system that will underpin the provision of trusted and secure multiparty dynamic virtual collaborative environments.

We are currently developing systems for:

• compliance assurance (an overarching system to verify that everything – hardware, software and the people using it – is working as it should)
• accountability (monitoring the actions of collaborating participants against both agreed standards and usual patterns of behaviour)
• intrusion detection
• verification of identity (going beyond user names and passwords to provide assurance that participants are who they claim to be).

Outcomes

Being able to set up trusted, secure, multiparty dynamic collaborative environments will likely prove an invaluable tool to many industries.

For example:

• remote medical consultation
• digital media post production
• managing geographically disparate teams
• coordinating the response to an emergency
• scientific research.

CSIRO’s trusted dynamic collaboration service could be offered as a part of a suite of eResearch tools and services.

Read more about how Trust can be portable.