Any system you build can become a potential target for misuse and attack by either the curious or the malicious. Regardless of the reason for the intruders' invasion, you will want to provide some measures to protect the system. To be realistic, rather than paranoid, your security policy and implementation will depend very much on the nature of your business and its associated risks. For this very reason, security is a term whose meaning changes dependent to whom you are speaking.

As well as security for business reasons, there is also the need for security for social reasons. Most respectable business will want to protect the privacy of their customers; it is difficult to give privacy assurances to potential customers if you have not implemented any security mechanisms. This goes beyond securing a transaction for an online purchase. For example, you may want to run an ethical online business and assure that information collected about your customers will not be used for nefarious marketing purposes.

In this chapter, we will be looking at what it means for a system of distributed objects to be secure. First, we look at what security is and what you need to consider when determining your security policy. Next we will review the salient features of the CORBA security service; this will help you gain an understanding of how the security service works.