Interesting People mailing list archives
THE TRUSTED OFFICE OF THE FUTURE -- 1984
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:32:01 -0400
TITLE: THE TRUSTED OFFICE OF THE FUTURE Compcon '84 AUTHORS: Prof. David J. Farber, University of Delaware Peter G. von Glahn, University of Delaware Stephen T. Walker, Trusted Information Systems, Inc. ABSTRACT: Several studies have examined the character of the office of the future. They generally looked at handlingroutine information and at general information processing.
In any real office, however, a certain amount of non- routine, sensitive information must also be handled. Personnel, financial, patent-related, or proprietary corporate information as well as government classifiedinformation fall into this latter category. We believe that
it is possible and desirable to handle this non-routine information using the same computer tools as are used to handle routine matters. This paper describes an architecture and a family of tools that allow information with varying sensitivities to be thus handled.We assume that organizations and offices of the future will not be too different from those of today. Human beings will run these offices using procedures not far removed from
today's. We assume that this future office will be fullycomputerized and that everyone will have his or her personal
computer. All the personal computers will be linkedtogether with a local computer network. Certain resources (e.g., large file stores, printers, high speed computational engines) will still be expensive in the future thus, sharing
them among many users will be common. This sharing will take place using the same network that links the personal computers. Since neither the common resources nor thecomputer networks will be cheap, using one system to handle both routine and sensitive information will be common. This
integrated system use will make the computers more acceptable to users and management. (In fact, personalcomputers and office networks may not be accepted until this can be done.) Rather than invent new procedures for handling
this mix of material, we propose to extend current officeinformation-handling practice into what we call the Trusted
Office of the Future. We base our Trusted Office of the Future on a distributed network architecture made up of personalcomputers and isolated specialized servers linked together
with a local computer network. We feel that such an architecture can be made safe for use with sensitiveinformation and is capable of growth as needs change. This
safety can be provided by integrating security-relatedfeatures into each member of the network. Since each member can be trusted to deal with sensitive information properly,
we call our system the Trusted Office System. We anticipate that each worker in the office of the future will have his or her own Personal Work Placeconnected to the office computer network. The Personal Work Place, we envision, will be a dedicated microprocessor-based
personal computer or workstation with built-in userinterfaces and mass storage. It will provide the tools and
local storage the worker needs to do his or her work. We assume that workers dealing with sensitive materials are trusted to do their jobs properly and maintain security since they can be held accountable for their actions.Therefore, they will be free to manipulate both routine and
sensitive information within their Personal Work Place asrequired. Embedded within the Personal Work Place will be a hardware/software module we call the Private Secretary. The Private Secretary will handle security functions as well as provide the network interface for the Personal Work Place.
Besides Personal Work Places, a collection of servers
will reside on the network. These will be single purposecomputers, each with a hardware/software module similar to the Private Secretary to handle security. Archival storage will be handled by file servers. Hard copy printout will be
handled by a print server augmented by a personnelidentification module (to validate a user's identification
prior to delivering sensitive material to him or her). Computational servers will handle database and number- crunching functions on a single-user-at-a-time basis (toeliminate security problems associated with multiple users).
A security server will handle system securityadministration. Since we assume the existence of multiple offices, each with its own local network, an office gateway
server will handle interoffice traffic. It will provide security encapsulation and routing for this traffic. It will also maintain a local user directory to process incoming interoffice communications. This paper is divided into four sections. The first expands on our assumptions about the environment of theoffice of future. The second gives an overview of current
(non-computerized) office practice for handling a mix ofroutine and sensitive material. The next section suggests an extension of this practice into the office of the future.
The final section presents our thoughts on how such a Trusted Office of the Future could be realized. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- THE TRUSTED OFFICE OF THE FUTURE -- 1984 David Farber (Sep 27)