8. Security

The worldwide spread of the Web and its use for commercial applications have highlighted the importance of security issues in a widely open network environment such as the Web. As a reminder, in general, system security results from the implementation of :

• an integrity policy for each system to ensure there are no security holes;

• authentication mechanisms, which guarantee the identity of users or other entities on the network;

• access control mechanisms to ensure that only authorized operations on network objects are carried out;

• confidentiality techniques to ensure that data transmitted over the network remains secret.