X-Road – Estonian Interoperability Platform Arne Ansper, arne@cyber.ee Cybernetica, www.cyber.ee

Introduction: Problem In the beginning of the decade, Estonian governmental IT systems suffered from poor interconnectivity Establishing new connections between governmental databases and systems was time-consuming and expensive Department of State Information Systems decided to improve the situation and solve the interconnectivity problems

Introduction: Solution Proposed solution Creation of the national middleware that would provide unified access to all governmental databases Using web services as underlying technology Governmental X-Road program was launched to fulfil this vision and to create and run the system Cybernetica was contracted to design and build the system

Introduction: Cybernetica Estonian R&D company, active in the field of information security Data communication security Digital signature and time-stamping technology e-Voting (first parliamentary elections over Internet in the world) Development of security critical distributed systems Consulting, auditing

Goal To build an infrastructure that would allow effortless access to the data in state registries without compromising the security of the data and with minimal impact to the existing systems.

Background Many registries, all very different, managed and developed by different organizations and financed separately Many users, most of them are very small organizations without security knowledge and with a very small IT budget High security requirements. Registries contain personal data that is in some cases used to make high value decisions and in some cases needed in real time

Unification Requirements Unified legal framework Unified security measures – the initial cost of implementing the security measures will be amortized across all the state registry connections Unified API – all applications must be able to access all state registries in a similar way Unified installation and management – all installations should look like same The "effortless" part needs some explanation. There are legal obligations that must be met when processing personal data. Having a unified legal framework makes things a lot easier for smaller organizations. There are security measures (technical, physical and organizational) that must be in place in order to process personal data. Having a unified framework for security measures ensures that every organization has just one set of measures to apply in order to be allowed to use all state registries. The initial cost of implementing the security measures will be amortized across all the state registry connections. All applications must be able to access all state registries in a similar way. The installation and management of the technical security measures must be doable by the ordinary IT administrator without special security training and knowledge. Impact to the existing systems should be minimal.

Security Requirements Required security properties by priority Evidentiary value, authenticity, integrity Availability Confidentiality

Security Requirements All applications required authenticity, integrity and assurance that it is possible to proof to the third party the origin of some data, received over X-Road In addition, it was envisioned that X-Road would be used by time-critical applications, like for performing the checks on the border. So, availability was next in the list of priorities And finally, the confidentiality was required in most, but not all cases

Approach to Solution Develop system for highest security requirements That could be used by smallest organizations Encapsulate the complexity Provide functionality

Components of the Solution X-Road is Organization Legislation Infrastructure Technology

Central Agency X-Road has central agency that ensures its operation Ensures the legal status of the X-Road and the information exchanged via it, by enforcing the stated policies Responsible for steering the further development of the X-Road and ensuring its consistency and integrity

Central Services Certification authority Directory service Time-stamping service Monitoring service - detecting security breaches, collecting the statistics Web-based portal for citizens and smaller organizations - access to services in a simple and centralized way

Infrastructure Based on web services - well supported, easy-to-use, vendor and platform neutral message exchange protocol SOAP and XMLRPC, with two-way transliteration Synchronous and asynchronous operation SOAP attachments X-Road servers can process messages with unlimited size

Infrastructure Meta-services that can be used to find out the structure and properties of the system List of other organizations List of services Formal description of the services for automatic generation of the user interfaces

Infrastructure

Infrastructure

Infrastructure

Technology: Deployment Self-contained standardized monofunctional server: Common PC hardware Free software GNU/Debian Linux based Automated installer for Linux and X-Road Minimal GUI Built-in patching system Cheap and easy to install and run At the same time - secure

Technology: Evidentiary Value All outgoing messages are signed All incoming messages are logged and time-stamped Message receiver can later prove with the help of the X-Road central agency when and by whom was the message sent.

Technology: Availability Distributed system, with minimal number of central services Secure DNS (DNS-SEC) provides robust, scalable directory service with built-in caching and redundancy Protocol supports redundant servers and load sharing Mechanisms against DoS attacks

Technology: Access Control X-Road core deals only with inter-organizational access control, where access is granted to organization as whole Organization must ensure that only right people can use this service, by using whatever technical means it sees appropriate This obligation is enforced by service provisioning contract between the organizations

Two Level Access Control Balanced use of technical and organizational security measures The impact to the existing systems was minimized Biggest success factor of the X-Road

Current Status In production from 2002 65 service providers 398 service consumers 30 million transactions on 2006

Future: International Usage? Independent deployment in other country or domain Interoperability between countries / domains

Deployment in Other Country Creation of the Central Agency Establishing the legal status Setting up the technical system Creation of the services Creation of the consumers

Interoperability Amendments needed to legal and technical systems Bilateral agreements between countries Solutions for certification and directory infrastructure - future research and development needed

Thank you!