Secure workflow environment

Workflow management products are deployed increasingly in almost all business activities and domains. Heterogeneity and geographical distribution are key features of the workflow environment. Workflow environments, therefore, must bridge the geographical barrier in a seamless and secure fashion. In addition, this environment must be platform-independent. In this paper, we present a Web-based secure workflow environment. Our approach integrates public-key encryption with the World Wide Web. Our goal is to provide a Web-based workflow solution so that a group-oriented virtual private network can be established across different geographical locations on the public Internet in a secure manner. Security for workflow technology on the Internet needs to be addressed from the ground up, and must be an integral part of the workflow environment. To this end, a combination of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and a public-key infrastructure may be used. Our solution relies on the portability of the Java language. Such a solution would support the "write once, run anywhere" paradigm that Java advocates. This paper describes the traditional workflow mechanisms and discusses state-of-the-art workflow environments. A discussion of the future direction for a secure workflow technology is also presented.