Simon Roberts

Security Principles for Java Programmers and Architects

Java provides a variety of tools for addressing common security problems, including key management, encryption, digital signatures that can be applied to both data and classes, pluggable login modules, web-based login, and single sign on in a distributed system.

This talk discusses the appropriate uses, strengths and weaknesses of these tools from a conceptual perspective, allowing you to make good choices about what you should implement in your system, and what you might prefer to avoid.

This talk has a companion talk "Java Security in Practice" which shows you how to write the code to use these features. It is not necessary to attend both talks, but if you choose to do so, try to attend this talk first.

Java Security in Practice

Java provides a variety of tools for addressing common security problems, including key management, encryption, digital signatures that can be applied to both data and classes, pluggable login modules, web-based login, and single sign on in a distributed system.

This talk describes how to implement these concepts in actual Java code.

This talk has a companion talk "Security Principles for Java Programmers and Architects" which explains the theoretical background, strengths, and weaknesses of these features. It is not necessary to attend both talks, but if you choose to do so, try to attend the other talk first.

Simon Roberts acquired twelve years experience as a software engineer in scientific and control systems fields, writing in C, Modula-2, C++, and a variety of assembly languages. In the evenings, he pursued a passion for teaching with local colleges and universities. From 1995 to 2004, he worked as an instructor and course developer with the education group of Sun Microsystems. With Sun, he served as a team lead on Java certification projects, and developed and taught courses on many aspects of Java, including Jini, Architecture, and JVM internals. Simon now works as a freelance instructor and author, and is starting a new book project, Head First Security, due to be released by O'Reilly later this year. Simon's previous books include Sun Certified Enterprise Architecture for J2EE Technology Study Guide, with Mark Cade, Prentice Hall 2002, and The Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide with Philip Heller, Sybex. Email: Simon.Roberts@earthlink.net