Abstract
We undertook a project to secure the distribution of medical information using Wax. This is a proprietary hypertext-based system used for information such as treatment protocols, drug formularies, and teaching material. An initial attempt, using digital signatures (in line with a recent European standard) and certificates conforming to X.509 has thrown up a number of interesting problems with current approaches to public key infrastructures. While the X.509 philosophy may be suitable for many electronic commerce applications, signatures on which we may have to rely for many years — such as those on books and contracts — appear to require a different approach.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
“Nurse sacked for altering records after baby's death”, K Alderson, The Times, November 95, p 6
“Why Cryptosystems Fail”, RJ Anderson, in Communications of the ACM vol 37 no 11 (November 1994) pp 32–40
“Security in Clinical Information Systems”, RJ Anderson, published by the British Medical Association, January 1996
“The Eternity Service”, RJ Anderson, Pragocrypt 96, proceedings published by CTU Publishing House, Prague, ISBN 80-01-01502-5, pp 242–252
“Decision Support for Primary Care Using the Path.Finder System”, lain Buchan, Heather Heathfield, Tom Kennedy, Peter Bundred, in British Journal of Healthcare Computing v 13 n 6, pp 20–22, July 1996
“Exchanging Clinical Knowledge via Internet”, IE Buchan, R Hanka, in MEDNET 96, proceedings to be published as a CD-ROM
“Government plans to save e-media for sake of nation”, Computer Weekly, February 20th 1997 p 16
Good Medical Practice, General Medical Council, UK
“GP Practice computer security survey”, RA Pitchford, S Kay, Journal of Informatics in Primary Care, September 95, pp 6–12
“SDSI — A Simple Distributed Security Infrastructure”, RL Rivest, B Lampson, at [http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/publications. html], presented at USENIX 96 and CRY PTO 96, April 30, 1996
“Institutionell-organisatorische Gestaltung inform ationstechnischer Sicherungsinfrostrukturen”, A Roßnagel, in Datenschutz and Datensicherung (5/95) pp 259-269
“Secure Hash Standard”, National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIS'T FIPS PUB 180, U.S. Department of Commerce, May 1993
“Information technology — Open Systems Interconnection — The directory: Authentication framework”, ITU-T Recommendation X.50.9, November 1993
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Anderson, R.J., Matyáš, V., Petitcolas, F.A., Buchan, I.E., Hanka, R. (1998). Secure books: Protecting the distribution of knowledge. In: Christianson, B., Crispo, B., Lomas, M., Roe, M. (eds) Security Protocols. Security Protocols 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1361. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0028155
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0028155
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64040-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69688-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive