X-Road – Estonian Interoperability Platform

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

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

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!