Best Practices for handling sensitve data in the UI

[Bill Fuller]

Here is the scenario. We will be writing a web application that will need to
sometimes properly handle sensitive data (salary, ssn, profit, etc.) using
roles. This data will be restricted at a macro level (for example, no access
to accounting modules unless authorized) and a more granular level (no
visibility, read-only, and read-update to certain fields, such as personal
information, depending on role).

Question: Is there a good source of information on best practices for
handling this? For example, does it make sense to provide custom controls
for some/all of managed fields containing sensitive data?

 

[George Ter-Saakov]

I usually create "data class" that keeps all sensitive data takes 'security
level' as a constructor and exposes data using properties.
Like

class clsEmployee
{
void clsEmployee (int iLevel);
decimal Salary
{
get
{
if( iLevel != 1 )
return 0;
else
return _dSalary;
}
}
}

George.

 

[Bill Fuller]

Interesting... I like that idea. Simple and elegant.

Thanks.

 

[sloan]

You should take a look at the CSLA framework for this specific need, as ~an
option.

 

[Bill Fuller]

I never heard of this, but a quick google on it looks promising.

I see the framework has support for Remoting. Do you know if it has been
extended to support WCF?

Also, do you know if it will complement Enterprise Library blocks? (Logging,
security, database, etc.)

 

[sloan]

He was at my user group meeting a few weeks ago.

And he said it had been WCF enabled, as a DataPortal channel option.

If you buy the book, it'll be just the 2.0 version.

I think you can buy a supplement book from his website, and that's where you
get the extra stuff.

Check the DotNetRocks website, they had a good interview with Rocky as well,
where he in plain english discusses some of his framework.


I'm not using the CSLA currently, so I don't know about the Ent Lib Block
integration.
But odds are, it'll work fine. Rocky is very aware of "what's out there".