| The massive growth in Internet usage is putting pressure on organizations to migrate business operations to the web. Market drivers for Internet growth include data sharing, real-time access to business systems, and access to business systems around the clock.; Some web sites change content continually, as much as several times a day for news and stock quote content. Other web sites are reference-based, and do not need frequently updated content. When web site content needs to be updated, the web application developer (technical team who creates a web site) or content owner (legal owner of a web's content) must have a way to securely copy new content to the web site. This process is called content maintenance and is the focus of this research.; This research investigates the challenge of achieving effective, secured web site content maintenance in one large organization, Bayer Corporation. Because Bayer has implemented a web farm for Internet and e-business hosting, web site developers and content owners must be able to securely update web content on all servers in the web farm at the same time. The problem with content maintenance is unique, because web site content must be maintained from the public Internet and the private Intranet to the same web-hosting environment.; For this research, the goals of security play an integral role in achieving effective content maintenance. The goals of security are authentication, authorization, confidentiality, data integrity, and non-repudiation. Content maintainers must be properly authenticated to Bayer's hosting environment and once authenticated, must be properly authorized only to the web sites that they maintain, and not to other web sites in the web farm. Confidentiality of private web pages on a web site is achieved through data encryption or through password protection so that search engines do not index confidential content. Data integrity is achieved through encryption of the transport between the content maintainer and the web-hosting environment and through special software installed on the web servers. Non-repudiation is achieved through digital certificates presented by the user to the web site. |
