Distributed Systems Security: Java, CORBA, and COM+

Security can have varying levels of difficulty for implementation. One factor in determining the difficulty is the number and distribution of the systems. With distributed systems architecture, there are different nodes and resources. One major issue with distributed systems is application security. There is the question of how security is handled in distributed applications, and how the client handles applications coming from an unknown source. The purpose of this paper is to examine three popular architectures for distributed systems applications and their security implications. The architectures analyzed are Java by Sun, CORBA by the OMG, and COM+ from Microsoft. Outstanding issues and future areas for research are considered.