Subject: RE: KISS for PKIX. (authentication/authorization seperation)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 16:40:48 -0700

re: authentication/authorization seperation

we seem to be dealing with two different issues ... possible analogy is
gravitational force distances vis-a-vis sub-atomic partical force distances.

seperation of authentication and authorization between different random
organizations ... where critical business dependancies falls to competitors with
different goals, objectives and policies I consider not a good thing.

however, it is reasonable to consider consistent & controlled checks & balances
within a business unit desirable. in some situations, finance industry will have
critical approval personal on mandated vacation ... so others are foced to
participate in approval process. there can also be sophisticated controls to
preclude collusion between collections of people attempting to bypass
organizational checks and balances. such operations tend to have consistent
policies and practives and capable of enforcing checks & balances consistency
within a business operating unit.

such considerations is far different from seperating authentication and
authorization by such wide margins that various operations may actually randomly
& uncontrollably be undertaken by direct competitors.

as such, i considered that i've been making statements regarding
(authenticaqtion & authorization) seperation guidelines operating from fthe
context of gravatational distances vis-a-vis other statements about guidelines
applied at sub-atomic particle distances.

within business context, creating a very high integrity security perimeter and
operating practices ... and then allowing critical operations to occur outside
of that perimeter (and at a much lower &/or unknown integrity level) is foolish
seperation of function. that is a totally seperate issue from sophisticated
anti-collusion practices that might occur within known security perimeter and
operating practices.

from a business practices standpoint there is also an issue of infrastructure
complexity ... creating multiple independent security perimeters and operating
practifces ... solely to address the anti-collusion problem is frequently not
justified ... i.e. anti-collusion tends to play at some of the higher integrity
levels .... and multiple independent secruity perimeters and their required
interaction not only drives up the cost significantly ... but can also
contribute to infrastructure degradation because of increase complexity of
interactions and unforeseen failure modes
(i.e. directly related to violating KISS).

At least some major consideration for looking at account authority solution was
to "cost-share"
existing security perimeter & operating practices w/o necessarily having to
create new ones ... especially when it can be shown that such leveraging at
least increases the integrity of the environment at the optimal
price/performance ... resulting in maximum ROI.