Secure Internet Access to Medical Data

Abstract

In Holbein et al. (1997) and previous papers (Holbein & Teufel, 1995; Holbein et al., 1996), the concept of a context-dependent access control has been introduced and discussed exhaustively. A prototype implementation of the concept is described in Nitsche et al. (1998). The prototype implementation is for local use only and would reveal many security holes if used over an open network: The dynamic link library (DLL) that handles the access control, for instance, would be publicly accessible. In Nitsche et al. (1998), by spying out the DLL code, one could obtain information about the database’s administrator log-in procedure, possibly leaving the entire database unprotected. However, using technology different from that presented in Nitsche et al. (1998) allows one to come up with a secure distributed solution to context-dependent access control over the Internet.