Workflow signature for business process domain: A new solution using IBMKD

Abstract

The workflow architecture plays an essential role in the development of inter-organizational business partnership. To ensure the security, authenticity and integrity, concept of workflow signature was introduced. The gain of workflow signatures is to provide electronic proof for auditing and also grant permission to perform tasks. Initially a concrete work flow scheme using HIBE was introduced. In a centralized workflow system, there exists a single workflow management engine, responsible for distributing tasks to the appropriate execution agents. The central workflow engine sends tasks to the respective agents only when all necessary conditions are satisfied. Thus a new algorithm is proposed, where the trust assumptions of HIBE are not conciled, is IB-MKD (Identity Based Message Key Distribution). Identity Based Encryption (IBE) brings in the ability of solving the key distribution problem by considering the security applications. IBE enables the sender to compute a secret key and then encrypt the message using this symmetric key. It also permits the recipient to decrypt the message after obtaining the private key from a Private Key Generator (PKG).