Secure publish-subscribe mediated virtual organizations

Digital technologies such as publish-subscribe systems present dynamic services support for inter-organizational activities. In order for these systems to achieve usage acceptance, various security requirements have to be met by the enabling technologies. In this article, we focus on confidentiality, privacy and integrity requirements for Publishers and Subscribers in a Publish-Subscribe mediated electronic market. We consider a virtual organization architecture, in which subscribers dynamically join and leave various organizations. We review techniques previously suggested in literature for providing confidentiality, privacy and integrity requirements and then present a new solution which is based on cryptographic hashes and public-key cryptography.