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Re: SAs and SPIs



Ran Atkinson wrote:
<deleted to save space>
> > Let us suppose Amgen wants to use IPSEC to control and
> > protect its transmitted and received messages. Within Amgen are a number of
> > projects and the results and data associated with each project need to be
> > protected from outside competitors. Also Amgen employees working on one
> > project only in selected cases are allowed to receive results from other
> > projects.  There are managers at several levels who have access to varying
> > parts of the developments.  There is also a personnel dept., a medical
> > dept., and a payroll-financial dept.  In addition, Amgen has research
> > arrangements with five other biotech firms which work on several of the
> > projects and there is some communication possible between several of them as
> > well as with the relevant Amgen projects.
> 
> The above describes a security policy at a high level.  The IETF IPsec specs
> are designed to support a wide variety of different kinds of policy, but the
> IETF does not mandate any particular security policy.
> 
> >         Now, how are the SPI-SA combinations set up to handle this traffic
> > and how are they (dynamically) controlled?
<deleted to save space>

I hesitate to jump in here, but here goes.  We have what appears to me
to be those that talk about implementing security policy, and those that
are looking for a description of how the use of IPSEC compliant products
will support an implementation in a scenario as described above.  

The way I read Mr. Bartee's message is that he is looking to ascertain
if there is a design and implementation mechanism within the IPSEC RFCs
that will provide a feature in products to give security personnel and
system administrators the capability to establish "security domains" ( I
can feel the backlash from the use of the word domain ;-) )  within an
organization that prevents the establishment of SPI-SA combinations and
secure data communications between designated groups/departments.

If I have missed the mark, my apologies for cluttering up the mailbox of
the group.

Regards,
John Horton


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