Securing Delay-Tolerant Networks with BPSec

10Using Security Contexts

The Security Context is a novel mechanism used to customize the behavior of security services without needing to define new security blocks or otherwise codify alternate representations of security operations. This mechanism is an integral part of BPSec because BPv7 networks may be deployed in varied networking environments each with special constraints on information exchange.

Security contexts are used by BPSec to insulate the handling of cipher suite materials from the varieties of network environments. It is expected that multiple security contexts will be developed over time. Understanding the purpose of these contexts is important to selecting what contexts to implement in a given network, and when new contexts must be developed and standardized.

After reading this chapter you will be able to:

• List the five services of a security ecosystem.
• Explain why traditional cipher suite definitions have limitations in certain networking environments.
• Evaluate security contexts for completeness against a set of necessary considerations.
• Demonstrate different approaches to handling the syntactic processing of data into and out of a security context.

10.1 The Case for Contexts

There are a few ways to discuss how security contexts are used in BPSec. One way is to focus on the definition of the security context to differentiate the concept from the concept of a cipher suite, as was done in Section 6.3. Another way is to outline the way in which security ...