Martin S Olivier
Research interests
My current research interests include the following:
- Database privacy
The information society we live in implies that information about
individuals is collected, stored and aggregated. This, in turn,
implies that an individual can be profiled and `known' by others whom
this individual has never even met. Ultimately it leads to a loss of
control over the personal space by the individual.
Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) may be used to limit the
extent to which information about the individual can be collected in
a connected world.
Database privacy provides mechanisms to ensure that personal
information already stored in a database is only used according to a
given privacy policy. Currently PETs are being developed to assist
with this facet of data protection. It is not only important to
develop PETs to support database privacy, but also to get to
understand the relationships between these and other PETs and the
relationship between PETs and the societal and juridical controls on
database privacy.
- Digital forensics
This is an emerging research interest with large areas of the problem
domain still uncharted. Current efforts attempt to better understand
this field. My initial work looks at the balance between
Privacy-enhancing technologies and the need to conduct a forensic
investigation where (demonstrated) reasons for such an investigation
exist.
- Secure information systems
Information systems operate at a higher semantic layer than the
databases they retrieve their information from (or store it in).
Examples of such systems are workflow and hypertext systems. The
semantics of such systems allows one to deduce security
requirements that are general to classes of systems, irrespective
of the particular application.
- Secure federated databases
Local autonomy of nodes in a federated database sometimes requires
different local security policies at the various nodes. This is
required, for example, in the case of virtual organisations where
the nodes are owned by different real organisations and each wants
to prescribe the security policy that applies to information owned
by it. The challenge is to develop systems that allow
interoperation but guarantee the enforcement of local security
policies throughout the federation. See the SPO project for more
information.
- Secure object-oriented databases
The characteristics of object-oriented systems have definite
implications on the security aspects of such systems. It is
necessary to determine the influence of inheritance, polymorphism,
instantiation and other facets of object-oriented systems on their
security.
For more information on any of the above see my
list of publications. The publications are in reverse
chronological order; see those at the top for the most recent
information. A list of postgraduate students
under my supervision is also available. The list of
conferences I am tracking might provide
further insight.
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Martin Olivier
Last update: 12 August 2004