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X-Road – Estonian Interoperability Platform Arne Ansper, [email protected] Cybernetica, www.cyber.ee

X-Road – Estonian Interoperability Platform Arne Ansper, [email protected] Cybernetica,

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X-Road – Estonian Interoperability Platform

Arne Ansper, [email protected]

Cybernetica, www.cyber.ee

Introduction: Problem

In the beginning of the decade, Estonian governmental IT systems suffered from poor interconnectivity

Establishing new connections between governmental databases and systems was time-consuming and expensive

Department of State Information Systems decided to improve the situation and solve the interconnectivity problems

Introduction: Solution

Proposed solution• Creation of the national middleware that would

provide unified access to all governmental databases

• Using web services as underlying technology

Governmental X-Road program was launched to fulfil this vision and to create and run the systemCybernetica was contracted to design and build the system

Introduction: Cybernetica

Estonian R&D company, active in the field of information security• Data communication security• Digital signature and time-stamping technology• e-Voting (first parliamentary elections over Internet

in the world)• Development of security critical distributed

systems• Consulting, auditing

Goal

To build an infrastructure that would • allow effortless access to the data in state

registries • without compromising the security of the data and • with minimal impact to the existing systems.

Background

Many registries, all very different, managed and developed by different organizations and financed separatelyMany users, most of them are very small organizations without security knowledge and with a very small IT budgetHigh security requirements. Registries contain personal data that is in some cases used to make high value decisions and in some cases needed in real time

Unification Requirements

Unified legal framework

Unified security measures – the initial cost of implementing the security measures will be amortized across all the state registry connections

Unified API – all applications must be able to access all state registries in a similar way

Unified installation and management – all installations should look like same

Security Requirements

Required security properties by priority• Evidentiary value, authenticity, integrity • Availability• Confidentiality

Security Requirements

All applications required authenticity, integrity and assurance that it is possible to proof to the third party the origin of some data, received over X-RoadIn addition, it was envisioned that X-Road would be used by time-critical applications, like for performing the checks on the border. So, availability was next in the list of prioritiesAnd finally, the confidentiality was required in most, but not all cases

Approach to Solution

Develop system for highest security requirements

That could be used by smallest organizations

Encapsulate the complexity

Provide functionality

Components of the Solution

X-Road is• Organization• Legislation• Infrastructure• Technology

Central Agency

X-Road has central agency that ensures its operation

Ensures the legal status of the X-Road and the information exchanged via it, by enforcing the stated policies

Responsible for steering the further development of the X-Road and ensuring its consistency and integrity

Central Services

Certification authority

Directory service

Time-stamping service

Monitoring service - detecting security breaches, collecting the statistics

Web-based portal for citizens and smaller organizations - access to services in a simple and centralized way

Infrastructure

Based on web services - well supported, easy-to-use, vendor and platform neutral message exchange protocol

SOAP and XMLRPC, with two-way transliteration

Synchronous and asynchronous operation

SOAP attachments

X-Road servers can process messages with unlimited size

Infrastructure

Meta-services that can be used to find out the structure and properties of the system• List of other organizations• List of services• Formal description of the services for automatic

generation of the user interfaces

Infrastructure

Infrastructure

Infrastructure

Technology: Deployment

Self-contained standardized monofunctional server:• Common PC hardware• Free software• GNU/Debian Linux based• Automated installer for Linux and X-Road• Minimal GUI• Built-in patching system

Cheap and easy to install and runAt the same time - secure

Technology: Evidentiary Value

All outgoing messages are signed

All incoming messages are logged and time-stamped

Message receiver can later prove with the help of the X-Road central agency when and by whom was the message sent.

Technology: Availability

Distributed system, with minimal number of central services

Secure DNS (DNS-SEC) provides robust, scalable directory service with built-in caching and redundancy

Protocol supports redundant servers and load sharing

Mechanisms against DoS attacks

Technology: Access Control

X-Road core deals only with inter-organizational access control, where access is granted to organization as whole

Organization must ensure that only right people can use this service, by using whatever technical means it sees appropriate

This obligation is enforced by service provisioning contract between the organizations

Two Level Access Control

Balanced use of technical and organizational security measures

The impact to the existing systems was minimized

Biggest success factor of the X-Road

Current Status

In production from 2002

65 service providers

398 service consumers

30 million transactions on 2006

Future: International Usage?

Independent deployment in other country or domain

Interoperability between countries / domains

Deployment in Other Country

Creation of the Central Agency• Establishing the legal status• Setting up the technical system

Creation of the services

Creation of the consumers

Interoperability

Amendments needed to legal and technical systems

Bilateral agreements between countries

Solutions for certification and directory infrastructure - future research and development needed

Thank you!