IDENTIFYING SECURITY ELEMENTS FOR
COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Nathalie Dagorn
Laboratory of Algorithmics, Cryptology and Security (LACS), 6 rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, L-1359, Luxembourg
& ICN Business School, 13 rue Maréchal Ney, F-54000 Nancy, France
Keywords: Cooperation, Cooperative information system, Inter-organizational system, IOS, Security.
Abstract: This paper tackles security issues for cooperative information systems (CIS) by first identifying the major
security requirements for this particular type of information systems, and then discussing the security
techniques usually implemented to address these requirements as well as their limitations.
1 INTRODUCTION
Today, information systems overlap the
organizational boundaries. For many organizations,
the intra-organizational integration phase is
complete (or is going well). In order to access new
markets or to benefit from synergy effects enabling
to reduce the costs, some organizations choose to
merge with other powerful actors of their sector, to
ally with partners or even with competitors. More
and more activities of the organization also depend
on activities realized outside its boundaries.
Organizations thus turn now to an inter-
organizational cooperation phase, for which many
benefits in terms of effectiveness are expected. In
this context, cooperative information systems (CIS)
refer to any information system allowing an
organization to cooperate in a usual way with one or
more partner organizations such as suppliers, clients,
subsidiaries of the group, etc.
In this paper, we tackle security issues for CIS:
we first identify the major security requirements for
this particular type of information systems, and then
discuss the security techniques usually implemented
(mastered or not) as well as their limitations.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2
introduces the context and motivation of our
research. Section 3 determines security requirements
for twelve CIS identified as representative in
previous work. Section 4 synthesizes the security
techniques usually implemented to satisfy these
requirements and outlines their limitations with
respect to the specificities of CIS. Section 5
summarizes the paper results and sketches some
directions for future work.
2 CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION
OF OUR RESEARCH
On the one hand, CIS have been classified and
analyzed during the last twelve years according to
theoretical, structural, functional and economical
perspectives (Dagorn, 2009 recapitulates these
proposals). Some innovative work appears
nowadays around concepts such as inter-
organizational process efficiency (Saeed et al.,
2005), inter-organizational performance (Straub et
al., 2004; Bharadwaj et al., 2007), inter-
organizational competitive dynamics (Chi et al.,
2007), inter-organizational knowledge sharing
(Apostolou et al., 2008), etc. But security issues
often remain insufficiently considered, and these
proposals seem to be inadequately or too weakly
supported by existing security frameworks on the
technical level.
On the other hand, at the heart of our subject,
networked enterprises need CIS able to manage
critical and/or large amounts of information in
possibly heterogeneous technological environments
and computing services. Thus, security requirements
between partners are also of major importance on
the organizational level: What information will the
partners have access to in the CIS? Is confidentiality
of transactions ensured…? These issues must be
addressed before implementing a CIS. Security
319
Dagorn N. (2009).
IDENTIFYING SECURITY ELEMENTS FOR COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography, pages 319-324
DOI: 10.5220/0002232403190324
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

issues affect all kinds of CIS and all cooperation
levels. For a future partner, the first problem is to
know the nature of information it will have to share
with the other organizations using the CIS. This
concern is particularly relevant for electronic
marketplaces, where confidentiality of information
transmitted through the CIS is a critical issue.
Moreover, even if rules for information access and
sharing were defined and accepted by all the
partners, an intrusion into the CIS remains possible,
which might reveal useful information to
competitors (prices, etc.).
This is why we aim to identify some security
elements (requirements, protection mechanisms,
open questions) for CIS in the next sections.
3 SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
In previous work (Dagorn, 2009), we proposed an
innovative taxonomy of CIS based on the task-
technology fit theory, which distinguishes between
five main tasks supported by the CIS (document
exchange, integration of information flows, standard
business transactions, online or standard resource
sharing, online transactions) and associated
technology (Electronic Document Management -
EDM-, integrative, standard or Web technology).
This stucture is kept in this section to analyze the
security requirements of the CIS identified. In this
section as well as in the next one, we assume that
two organizations A and B cooperate using a CIS.
3.1 Security Requirements for the CIS
Identified
3.1.1 CIS Based on EDM Technology
XML Document Systems. A and B cooperate by
exchanging XML messages or documents. The ex-
change network can be private or public. To ensure
security, Ekelhart et al. (2008) recommend to:
- Secure the partners A and B in matter of
access to the common network in order to
authorize XML messages only
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network such as the Internet is
used, implement secure exchange protocols.
Workflow Document Systems. A cooperates with
B by respectively connecting to the workflow
application to edit, modify, create, view, delete a
document. To ensure security, Wainer et al. (2003),
Mortgage Banking (2008) recommend to:
- Secure A and B
- Secure the workflow application
- If another application is used to exchange
files, secure this application
- Secure the server access hosting the
workflow application
- If a Web interface is used, secure the Web
site
- If a database is used, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
3.1.2 CIS Based on Integrative Technology
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Systems. A
and B cooperate by exchanging messages called
transactions. Those are transmitted either through a
private or a public network such as the Internet.
From the security viewpoint, the EDI system itself is
not intrusive (since A does not access directly B’s
data or applications). Narayanan et al. (2009)
recommend to:
- Secure A and B in matter of access to the
common network in order to authorize EDI
messages only
- Secure the EDI application
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
Systems. A cooperates with B using EAI-interfaced
information systems. To ensure security, Izza (2009)
recommends to:
- Secure A and B
- Secure A and B’s interfaced applications
- Secure the server where the operations are
performed as well as its access
- If a database is used, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
3.1.3 CIS Based on Standard Technology
Proprietary Applications. A and B cooperate in a
client-server mode. If B wants to access data from
A, the client application must be installed by B to
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enable the connection to A’s server. To ensure
security, Wortman (2008) recommends to:
- Secure A and B
- Secure the proprietary application (in general,
made by the provider)
- If a database is used, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems. A
cooperates with B by allowing their respective ERP
applications to exchange information through a
public or private network. To ensure security, Allen
(2008) recommends to:
- Secure A and B;
- Secure A and B’s ERP applications
- Secure the server access that hosts the ERP
system
- If a database is used, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
3.1.4 CIS Based on Standard or Web
Technology
Groupware. A cooperates with B using a
groupware. Since all cooperation situations cannot
be analyzed here, only generic guidelines (best
practices) to ensure security are proposed (Briguet,
2009; Menold, 2009):
- Secure A and B
- If applications are used to exchange files,
secure these applications
- If a Web architecture is used, secure the Web
site and its access
- If the organizations need to connect to a
server to put files to be shared, secure access
to this server
- If a database is used, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
Grid/Cloud Computing. A and B are elements of
the grid/cloud. Cooperation data is shared across the
grid/cloud. To ensure security, Demchenko et al.
(2008), Mansfield-Devine (2008), Smith et al.
(2009) recommend to:
- Secure A and B
- Secure the grid/cloud application
- Secure the server where the operations are
performed as well as its access
- Secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
Workflow Transactional Systems. A cooperates
with B using a workflow system, which manages the
correct sequence of the tasks achieved by A and B,
and performs automated processes. Various tasks
can be achieved, from the use of specific
applications to the generation of files or messages in
a predefined format (XML, EDI, etc.), or even the
update of a database. To ensure security, Cao et al.
(2009) recommend to:
- Secure A and B
- Secure the server access that hosts the
workflow application
- If another application is used to exchange
files, secure this application
- If a database is used, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- If a public network is used, implement secure
exchange protocols.
3.1.5 CIS Based on Web Technology
Web Applications. A and B use the same Web
application to cooperate; they access it through an
authentication system. To ensure security, Whittaker
and Andrews (2006), Waters (2009) recommend to:
- Secure A and B
- Secure the Web application
- Secure the Web server and its access
- If a database is shared, secure the database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- Implement secure exchange protocols.
Online Markets. The CIS is a Web site, which
partners (customer, seller) connect to. It stores
cooperation data and uses applications and/or
databases to manage it. To ensure security, Malik
and Bouguettaya (2005), Khosrow (2008), Lin and
Liu (2009), Tsung-Yi et al. (2009) recommend to:
- Secure the invoked applications
- Secure access to the Web server of the site
- Secure the Web Site
- Secure the back-office database(s)
- Secure data in transit
- Implement secure exchange protocols.
IDENTIFYING SECURITY ELEMENTS FOR COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
321

Table 1. Security requirements for the twelve CIS identified in the taxonomy.
Techno
-
logical
environ.
CIS
Secure
A and B
Secure
applica-
tion
Secure
server
access
Secure
Web site
or server
Secure
database
Secure data
during
transfer
Secure exchange
protocols
EDM-
based
XML document system
×
× if critical × if public network
Workflow document system
× × × ×
× if used × if critical × if public network
Inte-
grative
EDI
× ×
× if critical × if public network
EAI
× × × ×
× if used × if critical × if public network
Stan-dar
d
Proprietary application
× ×
× if used × if critical × if public network
ERP
× × ×
× if used × if critical × if public network
Stan-
dard or
Web
Groupware
× ×
× if used × if used × if used × if critical × if public network
Grid/cloud computing
× × × × ×
× if critical × if public network
Workflow transactional syste
m
×
× if used
×
× if used × if critical × if public network
Web
Web application
× × × × × if used × if critical ×
Online markets
× × × × × if critical ×
XML-based Web services
× × × × × × if critical ×
Web Services. A and B cooperate by invoking
services on the Web (regardless of the platform
type). To ensure security, Cook et al. (2006),
Whittaker and Andrews (2006), Periorellis (2007)
recommend to:
- Secure A and B
- Security the invoked applications
- Secure access to the Web server hosting the
services
- Secure the Web site
- Secure the back-office database
- If critical/confidential data is exchanged,
secure data in transit
- Implement secure exchange protocols.
3.2 Synthesis
The main security requirements related to the CIS
identified are summarized in Table 1. The table
shows that CIS operating in heterogeneous
environments have generally higher security
requirements than CIS operating in homogeneous
environments. The most attention should be paid to
CIS developed with Web technology (in the lowest
part of the table). The security techniques usually
implemented to meet these requirements are
discussed in the following section.
4 SECURITY PROTECTIONS
To prevent or counter security attacks on traditional
information systems, many hardware devices and
software may be deployed by the organizations, for
instance the use of a firewall, a demilitarized zone
(DMZ), a proxy, an antivirus solution or an intrusion
detection/prevention system (IDS/IPS). Some
additional techniques like cryptography, biometry or
steganography can be employed complementarily.
Many generic books on computer security are
available (e.g., Anderson, 2001; Cheswick et al.,
2003; Lehtinen, 2006), and the reader may refer to
them for more details on the mentioned mechanisms.
Thus, only the (logical) techniques meeting the
security requirements identified in previous section
are developed here.
4.1 Usual Security Techniques
Securing A and B. The following techniques may
be implemented:
- Deploy a firewall to filter network traffic to
the server (block telnet/ftp access)
- Implement a routing policy between the
partners (e.g., route the network traffic from
the partner to the DMZ and not to the local
area network -LAN)
- Implement authentication mechanisms based
on a trust relationship between Windows
domains
- Install a leased line dedicated to cooperation
operations between the organizations (always
preferable than using the Internet network).
Securing the Application. This may be enabled by:
- Developing the application with secure
coding techniques (Howard and LeBlanc,
2001; Graff and Van Wyk, 2003)
- Authenticating users when the application is
launched (credentials).
Securing the Server Access. The following
techniques may be implemented:
- Restrict the server access to certain users
(authentication)
- Administrate user rights (group management,
read/write/execute permission)
- Deploy a public key infrastructure (PKI).
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Securing the Web Site or Server. This may be
achieved in particular through:
- Restricting the server access to certain users
(authentication)
- Setting security parameters for the HTTP
server (disallow directory traversal, disable
scripts where possible, etc.)
- Restricting the services provided by the
server (disable ftp/telnet services, etc.)
- Deploying a firewall to filter network traffic
to the server (allow only HTTP traffic for
port 80, etc.)
- Implementing a DMZ to install the server.
Securing the Database. The following techniques
may be employed:
- Implement authentication mechanisms
- Manage user rights to access data based on
user groups
- Encrypt data.
Securing Data in Transit. This may be achieved by
the use of cryptographic and network management
techniques like:
- Data encryption
- Use of IPSec (protocol suite intended to
secure IP communications by adding
authentication and/or encryption layers for
each IP packet; IPSec includes protocols to
create cryptographic keys)
- Streaming of content available only to
holders of a valid group key (e.g., multicast
video streaming).
Implementing Secure Exchange Protocols.
According to the type of exchange, it is
recommended to:
- Use secure versions of protocols (e.g.,
HTTPS based on SSL, which provides
security features to the HTTP protocol)
- Use SSL, SET, 3D Secure (Visa) or
SPA/UCAF (Mastercard) for electronic
commerce
- Use IPSec for the encryption of IP data
packets.
4.2 Limitations and Issues to Solve
The security techniques developed in this section
are, for most, individually well mastered today.
However, they are generic, do not take into account
the specificities of CIS, and are usually implemented
as needed without a cooperation rationale. Hence,
security vulnerabilities may persist in the
organization’s trust architecture. Since it is not
relevant to create security techniques and tools
specific to CIS, but assuming that future information
systems will inevitably go towards greater openness
and interoperability (Fenoulière, 2004), we
recommend integrating some of these security
techniques in a framework specific to CIS in order to
adapt their features to an inter-organizational
cooperation context.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
Taking into account the latest technological
developments and issues in the area of CIS, our
research shows in particular that most inter-
organizational cooperative activities take place today
via the Web, and that this practice raises major
security issues for the CIS. Therefore, security issues
were emphasized by analyzing the security
requirements of each CIS identified, and
highlighting the limitations of the security
techniques usually implemented to address these
issues.
A questionnaire survey conducted with ten
leading French companies of the sectors of industry,
research, banking and insurance, engaged in one or
more inter-organizational cooperation processes,
confirmed the trend of Web cooperation, the
growing issue of Web security, as well as the recent
efforts of the organizations to manage their security
(through technical protections, security policies that
mainly conform to ISO standards, security budget,
etc.). It also confirmed our assumption that more
security techniques should be implemented when the
technological environment of the CIS is
heterogeneous (Dagorn, 2008). Finally, the security
requirements and techniques proposed in this paper
were validated for each CIS by the concerned
organizations.
To complete this research, our ongoing work in
this area consists in establishing a security model for
CIS, and deriving a security framework for CIS
including some of the security techniques described
in Section 4.
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