Tulane Engineering Forum

Sujeet Shenoi

Dr. Sujeet Shenoi is the Charles W. Oliphant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Tulsa. He received his B.S. (ChE) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 1981, and his M.S. (ChE), M.S. (CS) and Ph.D. degrees from Kansas State University in 1984, 1097, and 1989, respectively. As a member of the Center for Information Security, an NSA Center of Excellence for Information Assurance Education and Research, Dr. Shenoi is involved in several security projects: protocol verification, intrusion detection and countermeasures, secure interoperability and programmable security. Dr. Shenoi is the founder of the Tulsa Undergraduate Research Challenge (TURC), a nationally recognized program of scholarship and service. For his innovative strategies integrating academics, research and service, the Carnegie Foundation named Dr. Shenoi the 1998-1999 U.S. Professor of the Year.

Presentation Topic: Programmable Security: The Next Step in Programming Language Evolution?

By Sujeet Shenoi

Summary

High assurance security is critical to a host of Internet applications ranging from electronic commerce to national defense. Unfortunately, most software architectures and tools require designers to implement security from scratch. The resulting ad hoc solutions often fail in open, distributed environments.

This talk focuses on "programmable security" for distributed systems and languages. The idea is to embed primitive security mechanisms, and constructs for programming and verifying security within distributed object languages and architectures. This approach is similar to the incorporation of primitive data types, type constructors and type-checking facilities in conventional programming languages. Just as strong typing improves code reliability, programming and checking for security at the language level can significantly enhance the security and reliability of software systems deployed in open environments.