Seguridad en servicios web: como garantía de control en la interoperabilidad de la información geográfica

Abstract

The “Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi – IGAC” is the entity responsible for producing the official maps of the Republic of Colombia. In the same way, the “Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Información Geográfica – CIAF” is responsible for detecting, appropriate and transfer technologies for the management of geographic information and spatial data infrastructures through the use of Remote Sensing, Information Systems Geographic and related tools, to support institutional strengthening and sustainable development of the country and the region.

This office has over 40 years of experience with the transfer of knowledge, to train professionals of diverse nationalities through mechanisms and strategies taught in a classroom teaching with highly qualified teaching staff, and for the purpose of transferring knowledge and education high quality. 

So, since 2008 the Geoservices Group is putting in operation a variety of web tools under open source software philosophy that promote a new way to work in the research, education and diffusion around geographic information, and that are based on an open and participative spirit. These tools are implemented through web services and applications (in case of the geographic component), that on earlier years had been developed with success, especially in order to make this information interoperable with other institutions that form the Colombian Spatial Data Infrastructure.

The different technologies and tools used by the group arises in an oriented services philosophy. While promoting the use of these open source tools for the geographic information management, the group also has knowledge in GIS proprietary tools, like all the ArcGIS technology package.

However, and because of the growing interest of many institutions in protect the information given to the citizens through web services, we have to think in strategies that assure this information gets where it belongs, especially when dealing with sensitive information such as the geographical.

The previous is the main motivator of this article, because it is currently in the process the study on implementation of security for web services of the IGAC node of ICDE, together with all licenses generated in the policies and standards component of the Spatial Data Infrastructure Group of CIAF, and is interesting from a technological view to show how software components are currently in the world market for this purpose.