Principles for the design of standard security protocols for multilevel network communications.

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of communications and computer networks has spawned an urgent need for comparable developments in network security. Significant issues such as message authenticity, transmissions confidentiality and data integrity must be addressed. Unfortunately, extremely few network designs effectively deal with such complex security issues, especially those for multilevel network environments. To encourage greater advancement in this important field, standards are needed to effectively address several aspects of network security. Specifically, standard security protocols are needed to influence the direction of industry in providing multilevel secure network designs. In this thesis, we propose three important principles that will enhance standard security protocol designs. These include the Compatibility Principle, the Inclusion Principle and the Support Principle. We describe the concepts of these design principles and demonstrate their benefits for security protocols in multilevel secure network communications.