BACKGROUND

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a firm base of research and expertise in the fundamental technologies behind public key infrastructure (PKI). Professor Miron Livny and Co-PI Todd Tannenbaum with the Computer Science (CS) Department Condor Project and Co-PI Eric Norman and PI Dr. Keith Hazelton of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) Middleware Systems Technology Group, share a common focus on practical implementation and deployment of PKI.

In September, 2000, UW-Madison consolidated its work in this area by establishing a PKI Laboratory. With overall guidance from Professor Larry Landweber, the PKI Laboratory, will be grounded in a collaborative relationship between Condor system staff (in the CS Department's Computer Systems Lab) and the Middleware Systems Technology Group and its companion resource, the DoIT Tech Lab. Leaders of Condor and the Middleware Systems Technology Group agree that two key needs for PKI are 1) broad deployment of a more convenient security infrastructure based on developments in PKI and 2) a language whereby users separated by time and space can communicate and enforce their security goals and policies in an automated fashion. Collaboration between the PKI infrastructure group and the policy language group would flow from the natural tension between security goals (what we'd like) and human interface issues (what is acceptable to users). Such a PKI Lab would serve a vital ongoing role as a test bed for higher education applications with critical security needs.