A COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY SYSTEM FOR OSI NETWORKS

Abstract

Day by day protecting users of computer networks against eavesdroppers is becoming more critical. The performance of the existing -security architectures is • degrading with • the size of the network and its resources like network servers. In this dissertation, a global security architecture called Comprehensive Security System. (CSS) is implemented. It will provide a large number of security .services each with several alternative mechanisms. The CSS is basically a Client-Server model. The server process accepts the incoming messages and responds automatically if needed . The client is an interactive application program which processes the received messages as well as initiates sessions. To ,implement CSS, a network model is created with Clients and a Security Management Centre (SMC). °SMC performs security services and managerial functions. The CSS behaves like a centralised as well as decentralised network. Confidentiality is implemented with both public key cryptosystern (decentralised) and symmetric key cryptosystem (centralised). Digital signature with conventional cryptography is implemented with the most secure block algorithm IDEA. The main advantage of this system is, users need not agree with the cryptographic algorithm prior to the communication, and security codes are used to achieve this feature.