This ECMA Standard defines a number of abstract security services for use in a distributed system. For each of the abstract security services identified this document gives a service definition.
These service definitions are intended to be used in contexts such as:
- Open Systems Interconnection where they may be used as references for the development of security related protocols or elements of other protocols,
- Open Distributed Processing where they may be used as references for the development of secure systems architectures,
- Applications Standards developments (e.g. Distributed Office Applications) where they may be used to specify security functionality embedded in specific applications.
The security requirements of distributed applications that are specific to the nature of these applications (e.g. access controls to the objects owned by a given application such as a database manager) are addressed here only with regard to the interactions of such applications with the security services.