SFINKS: Secure Focused Information, News, and Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

Cross-agency collaboration and sharing of digital data is critical to respond to or prevent threats to U.S. interests. While traditional hierarchical information sharing approaches ensure that only relevant information is delivered to authorized nodes, the resulting organizational overhead severely impedes timely sharing of critical information. Although alternative approaches to secure data release have previously been proposed, they all have had severe practical limitations. We are developing SFINKS - a flexible collaboration platform that enables secure and focused information sharing across organizations. SFINKS uses two key technologies developed at ISI to support a new concept of fine-grained semantically controlled information visibility. The Hands infrastructure provides a semantic network-based data model, search and filtering capabilities, distributed systems support and fine-grained control of resource visibility. The Adaptive Trust Negotiation and Access Control (ATNAC) provides flexible access control and trust management.