Towards safety and security critical communication systems based on SOA paradigm

Within the last decades concepts and technologies based on Internet Protocol have found their way into domains that long have been the market of proprietary and thus closed telecommunication systems, for example for mission critical purposes. In this context we are witnessing a move towards the merging of circuit-switched voice and packet-switched data networks into a converged network, interconnecting new and existing services in a common infrastructure. This trend was mainly driven by the paradigm of Service-oriented Architecture offering increased efficiency, flexibility and interoperability. Nevertheless safety and security related topics remain, which pose new issues and concerns in this area of research. The authors are convinced that these new issues and concerns need an in-depth analysis and synthesis. Therefore, this paper gives an overview on latest research activities and projects in this area, and states the authors´ view on this topic.