An information flow control approach in composite services

Distributed information flow control has several advantages over centralized information flow control for securing composite services in service oriented environments. In this paper, an approach of distributed information flow control which utilizes security labels to convey control information is considered. At first, security labels are formally defined to describe the control information of information flow control. The computation method of security labels is presented as well. Secondly, a label-based information flow control protocol, namely LBIFC, is presented. This protocol is based on request/decision protocol between service providers. Thirdly, both the theoretical analysis and experimental validation of proposed LBIFC are provided. The results show that our solution not only keeps the security capabilities of information flow control, but also reduces the complexity of flow control protocol in composite services.