Multidomain Virtual Security Negotiation over the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

Abstract

When organizations need to exchange critical information they need to rely on dependable and resilient channels, which define a trusted overlay network over the underlying IP infrastructure. Today, secure information sharing in these scenarios has become a main concern for domain administrators. To solve this problem, current research initiatives are focused on the establishment of (usually static) trust relationships and security services among such organizations. This paper analyzes the usage of the standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for performing a multidomain virtual negotiation, in order to dynamically protect the exchange of critical data from the security risks of the public networks. As an example of this proposal, a prototype is presented in the context of secure overlay networks. This prototype shows also the integration of the virtual negotiation process with a Policy Based Network Management infrastructure (PBNM), in order to provide the security policies required by each organization.