Forestry Application

3. Security

After looking for web-based security models, the NFIS team found that there were no OGC standards-based security control mechanisms that met its multi-level security requirements.

In cooperation with Distributed Data Systems (http://dss.bc.ca/), NFIS Pacific determined that the Data Access Control System (DACS http://dacs.dss.bc.ca) security model most closely fit their security requirements.

DACS consists of a federation of one or more jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction has the ability to authenticate its users and/or provide web services. DACS manages identities by maintaining the username and password in an encrypted cookie for the duration of the session. It passes these credentials around to all jurisdictions, providing a single sign-on to the federation. To provide access control at the object level, DACS provides role-based access to objects within a jurisdiction, which allows the administrator to control access at a fine level of granularity.

To learn more about DACS, click DACS overview and DACS FAQ.

Conclusion

NFIS is still in development, but prototype reports now let users see protected forests across the country. Users can also generate an integrated view of terrain, geology, forest cover, roadways and watershed boundaries.

NFIS provides a web-based capability to find, access and seamlessly integrate information held by different jurisdictions in servers located across the country—a capability nonexistent five years ago.