Towards Secure Agent Distribution and Communication

Development of acceptable agent-based, distributed systems requires secure techniques for agent migration and agent communication. Several Java-based agent frameworks provide these functions to greater or lesser extents. This paper describes an agent distribution framework for intercommunicating agents using Java which targets several key goals: 1) Provide an agent dispatch mechanism to selected nodes from secured agent repositories by one or more authenticated agent deployment applets or agents, 2) Adjust the operating environment for each agent depending upon its role-based authenticated security level. 3) Provide inter-agent communication by way of its own published objects as well as a multicast event service. 4) Provide encryption for communications depending on the security requirements. 5) Provide a distributed naming directory of agents populating the network. 6) Monitor agents proactively for appropriate activity. 7) Keep the environment lightweight, making agents small in size, and the package easy to use.