Security and the Directory

The Directory contains information about objects of many types. This information relates to different aspects of an object´s behaviour, and, of course, it varies according to the type of the objects. It is natural, therefore, to consider storing additional information in the Directory to control access and allow secure use of these objects. There are already a number of security attributes defined within the attribute structure of the Directory, and the present versions of the recommendations and standards contain a framework for authentication of users. Those aspects of the Directory related to security are described, and it is shown how the Directory may be used in a real application to provide secure transmission of electronic mail messages. Some current issues in the Directory work related to security are also highlighted