Authentication and Authorization in Server Systems for Bio-Informatics

Authentication and authorization are two tightly coupled and interrelated concepts which are used to keep transactions secure and help in protecting confidential information. This paper proposes to evaluate the current techniques used for authentication and authorization also compares them with the best practices and universally accepted authentication and authorization methods. Authentication verifies user identity and provides reusable credentials while authorization services stores information about user access levels. These mechanisms by which a system checks what level of access a particular authenticated user should have to view secure resources is controlled by the system. Digital signatures and certificate can be used to authenticate the source of messages with the help of tls and ssl which are now an integral part of most web browsers clients and web servers. Digital signature and certificate is one of the frontier approaches which security experts recommend.Bio informatics servers are internet services for sequence analysis and the prediction of aspects of protein structure and function. Users submit protein sequence or alignments the server returns a multiple sequence alignment prosite sequence motifs low complexity regions seg prodom domain assignments nuclear localization signals regions lacking regular structure and predictions of secondary structure solvent accessibility globular regions transmembrane helices coiled coil regions structural switch regions and disulfide bonds. For all services users can submit their query either by electronic mail or interactively from world wide web. Since there would be highly confidential and secure data in certain type of disease research and drug discovery we need an effective authentication and authorization technique to safeguard the interest of the research.