Virtual private laboratories: concept and two building blocks

We are facing globalization of R&D activities over networks involving different branches, companies, and organizations. These activities can be helped a lot by the Internet. However, we have to be careful about security problems associated with such activities. The purpose of this paper is to identify the security problems and introduce the total system as a new concept: virtual private laboratories (VPLs). Some of the identified problems are trivial but others are not; the former can be solved by a direct use of existing cryptographic primitives and protocols, whereas the latter needs new technologies and theories. Although all of them are necessary for VPLs, this paper is focused on two nontrivial building blocks and a theory: (1) academic database with multiple security functions, (2) data hiding for the purpose of entrusted data analysis, and (3) risk-management theory for digital objects secured by applied cryptography. In particular, (2) is studied in detail and difference from conventional data-hiding is shown with respect to evaluation criteria.