9.1 Security Threats and Mechanisms

Threats to enterprise-critical assets fall into a few general categories:

• Disclosure of confidential information
• Modification or destruction of information
• Misappropriation of protected resources
• Compromise of accountability
• Misappropriation that compromises availability

Depending on the environment in which an enterprise application operates, these threats may manifest themselves in different forms. For example, in a traditional single system environment, a threat of disclosure might manifest itself in the vulnerability of information kept in files. In a distributed environment with multiple servers and clients, a threat of disclosure might also result from exposures occurring as the result of networking.

Although not all threats can or need be eliminated, there are many circumstances where exposure can be reduced to an acceptable level through the use of the following security mechanisms: authentication, authorization, signing, encryption, and auditing. The following sections describe J2EE platform security mechanisms and indicate how to use the mechanisms to secure J2EE applications.