Posets and protocols-picking the right three-party protocol

In this paper, we introduce a framework in which we can investigate the possibility of adapting a security protocol in order to obtain optimal efficiency according to the communication channels available. This method is based on the observation that there is a partial order imposed upon the actions of the various parties involved in a protocol. We define operations permitted on the partially ordered set associated with the protocol and obtain transformations of the original protocol while preserving the security properties. Performing these operations on the protocol we enumerate the options available to a system.