Secure publishing of XML documents

Secure publication over the Internet of XML data is becoming a crucial need as XML is rapidly becoming a standard for document representation and exchange over the Web. Publishing services must have a mechanism that ensures that a user receives all and only those portions of information he/she is entitled to access (for instance those for which the user has paid a subscription fee) and that these contents are not eavesdropped during their transmission from the publishing service to the user. In this paper we present the work carried on in the area of secure XML publishing as part of the Ph.D. activity. More precisely, we describe a preliminary architecture for an XML Publisher, emphasizing the open issues to be covered.