Service for secure and protected applications in Collaborative Learning Environments

This paper presents a service which offers security through Web Services technology and offers its services to meet security requirements of Collaborative Learning environment. The use of Web Services to offer security in Collaborative Learning environments complements the functionalities of such environments, that is, it is not limited to the platforms in which the client system was developed. This security service uses cryptography and digital signature to offer integrity, non-repudiation, confidentiality and authenticity. It was possible to confirm, through tests, that service offers secure and protected applications in a flexible, configurable, scalable and efficient manner. The service functionalities presented in this paper are used in a case study for the file upload tool for Sakai and Moodle environments, which were modified so as service could be used. The contribution of this paper relies on the case study for the above-mentioned environments, once this tool in these systems has no security services. Some modifications in these environments were necessary in order to evaluate service applicability in different environments. The case study is presented as proof of concept for the security services proposed in this study.