An ability to configure priorities, however, will require a much better understanding of what users actually need. Victor Frost also observed,

Security is essential to national-scale applications such as health care, manufacturing, and electronic commerce. It also is important to crisis management, particularly in situations where an active adversary is involved or sensitive information must be communicated. Many traditional ideas of network security must be reconsidered for these applications in light of the greater scale and diversity of the infrastructure and the increased role of nonexperts.

To begin with, the nature of security policies may evolve. Longer-term research on new models of composability of policies will be needed as people begin to communicate more frequently with other people whom they do not know and may not fully trust. On a more short-term basis, new security models are needed to handle the new degree of mobility of users and possibly organizations. The usability or user acceptability of security mechanisms will assume new importance, especially those that inconvenience legitimate use too severely. New perspectives may be required on setting the boundaries of security policies not based on physical location.

As organizations and individuals form and re-form themselves into new and different groupings, their security policies must also be adapted to the changes. Three reorganization models—partitioning, subsumption, and federation—may be used, and each may engender changes in security policies. The following are simplistic descriptions, but they capture the general nature of changes that may occur. Partitioning involves a divergence of activity where unanimity or cooperation previously existed. In terms of security, partitioning does not appear to introduce a new paradigm or new problems. In contrast, subsumption and federation both involve some form of merging or aligning of activities and policies. Subsumption implies that one entity plays a primary role, while at least one other assumes a secondary role. Federation, on the other hand, implies an equal partnering or relationship. Both subsumption and federation may require that

Front Matter (R1-R14)

Overview and Summary (1-7)

Application Needs for Computing and Communications (8-54)

Technology: Research Problems Motivated by Application Needs (55-98)

Summary and Findings: Research for National-Scale Application (99-138)

Bibliography (139-142)

Appendixes (143-144)

A Workshop Series on High Performance Computing and Communications (145-155)

B Background--HPCCI and NII (156-157)

C Acronyms and Abbreviations (158-160)