Standards for security in open systems

The author presents an overview of recent and ongoing activities in ISO/IEC and CCITT aimed toward making OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) communications as secure as any user may deem necessary. A key achievement in 1988 was the publication of the International Standard for OSI Security Architecture. Other significant advances are the security features incorporated in the 1988 versions of the CCITT X.400 (message handling) and X.500 (directory services) series of recommendations. In the wake of these 1988 achievements, a great deal of security-related standards development activity is now in progress. Standards under development include generic open system security frameworks and models, an OSI security management service, security extensions to certain of the layer protocols, and security features for specific OSI applications