Global networking has brought with it both new opportunities and new security threats on a worldwide scale. Since the Internet is inherently insecure, secure cryptographic protocols and a public key infrastructure are needed. In this paper we introduce a protocol component architecture that is well suited for the implementation of telecommunications protocols in general and cryptographic protocols in particular. Our implementation framework is based on the Java programming language and the Conduits+ protocol framework. It complies with the Beans architecture and security API of JDK 1.1, allowing its users to implement application specific secure protocols with relative ease. Furthermore, these protocols can be safely downloaded through the Internet and run on virtually any workstation equipped with a Java capable browser * . The framework has been implemented and tested in practice with a variety of cryptographic protocols. The framework is relatively independent of the actual crypto...