Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Healthcare and Security/Privacy
 > > It seems like we need a multi-level security model for medical records. Andrew Layman said: > SOAP .... provides serialization rules for entire objects ... Len Bullard said: > Usually, role-based security with flags for record types (eg, juvenile vs adult in our apps) is adequate. Matt Sergeant said: > It would be interesting to be able to define security tokens in terms of > XPath match expressions... Jonathan Borden said: > one might then create a DOM extension which would control access to parts of the document tree depending on the ACL metadata element. Walter Perry said: > -- identify various sources of documents with the standard transforms which must be performed first in the pipeline of processing them All of these message threads touch on issues we have to address with respect to multi-level security and privacy. The privacy and security challenges are due in part to promoting XML as a technology for application-to-application integration and data integration. We can transfer data across the wire, but can we transfer the security model that's appropriate for that data ? across heterogeneous systems? Consider the scenario of transferring medical records. Assume at Federation East Hospital, we have patient records managed by a powerful DBMS. The database administrator uses role-based security, packages, views, stored procedures and other techniques for managing who has access to what data. Let's assume the patient record actually has a full map of a patient's DNA. We can drill down to the gene and chromosome level. A surgeon planning an operation who wants to check risk factors has full access. His or her role enables the surgeon to execute a query that can get the DNA info -- retrieve the locator, materialize a BLOB, and away we go. The clerk down the hall can get admitting information, but his role does not enable him to access diagnostic test results or DNA. All is well because Federation East Hospital has an ace database administrator. Now let's say Federation East has to transfer the patient to Klingon West Hospital. How do we preserve authorities or privileges to access data if Klingon West manages database security by user instead of role, or stores records using a primitive file system. At Federation East, the DBMS safeguards who has what rights to access data. If Klingon West is running a DBMS, we can use the DBMS's data replication features to replicate security as well as the data. However, the picture changes if we're using a patient transfer application that writes an XML file or stream or serializes objects. An application with the right authorities can retrieve data from the database, map it into application objects, and then serialize the data across the wire. If Federation East and Klingon West are running the same Java classes for ADT (Admitting Discharge Transfer), the natural inclination for doing a patient records transfer will be to have a Transfer class that serializes Patient object(s) using SOAP or another vehicle. The application at Klingon West is going to persist the data. How do we guarantee Klingon West can provide the rich security model for persistent data that we saw at East? In the schema or DTD, we can define access levels for the constituent parts of a medical record, and code the data to the security levels enforced by our database. But how do we use that information at the receiving end if we have a different DBMS or use a file system to store medical records? Don't we have to transfer some kind of metadata that describes the authorities required to access the data? It seems we need a protocol that queries for the security model at the other end and then performs standard transforms based on the recipient's security capabilities. It should be granular enough to identify security requirements to the attribute level. (We'll eventually have systems with enough horsepower that we won't even think about the overhead this imposes.) 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
