Zeepe.com

Loading content, please wait ...

About Security Manager

Zeepe brings significantly enhanced capability and functionality to the delivery of web-based content and represents a powerful resource in the creation of fully-functional web-technology based Windows applications.

The framework requires licensing of the use of its features, together with a simple dialogue with the user to enable them to affirm that they trust the publisher of the application they are about to use. MeadCo's Security Manager enables both licensing and the confirmation of trust.

MeadCo's Security Manager works like this:

• The  zeepe:license  tag scripted on the 'root' html document of a Zeepe application references the MeadCo publishing license which has been issued to the publisher of the application, and which is located on the publisher's web server.
  
  
• When the application is accessed for the first time, the Security Manager control (installed on the user's machine as part of the Zeepe framework installation) locates the publishing license file and checks these three parameters:
  
  
  • Is the root URL from on or under which the content is being served identical to one whose address is bound into the license?
  • Is the license current, or has it expired?
  • Has the license been signed with Mead & Company's own Verisign keys? (Confirmation that the license file itself is original and intact, as issued).
• If Security Manager can confirm all three checks, then the license containing details of the publisher and the publisher's domain(s) -- together with the control(s) and other functions it may verify -- is presented to the user for acceptance.
  
  
• If Security Manager cannot find a valid publishing license, or if any of the three security requirements are not met, then the user is informed accordingly and the content will not be run.

Naturally it is for the user to chose whether or not to trust the publisher and agree or decline to accept the licensed content (except in the special 'silent' case of corporate intranet content) ... but such comprehensive validation by Security Manager has been proved to make acceptance much more likely. Here is a publishing license for some of MeadCo's sites:

ActiveX control domain binding issues:

When a valid license is accepted, any denoted ActiveX content will be bound to the domain it is being served from, as requested. If a page from any other domain happens to reference the same ActiveX control(s), it will obey the standard Internet Explorer security rules as defined by IE Security Zones (see MSKBQ182569 for technical details). This behaviour is provided for by MeadCo's custom implementation of Internet Explorer Security Manager.

Content and controls validated by a publishing license:

MeadCo's Security Manager is a 'standalone' component, and can therefore be used by developers and publishers to apply publishing licensing to their own applications, content and controls. So whilst MeadCo's products such as Zeepe and ScriptX 'talk' to the Security Manager control in an intimate and useful way, the potential use for publishing licensing is very much broader.

The company's user-centric publishing licenses have proved to be 100% functional and secure over eight+ years of wide-scale corporate deployment.

More : Security Manager technical data