1. X-Road – Estonian Interoperability Platform
Arne Ansper,
Cybernetica,

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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.

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

9. 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

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

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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Infrastructure

17. Infrastructure

18. Infrastructure

19. 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

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

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

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

26. 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

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

28. Thank you!