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An ISO 27001 compliant information security management system is difficult to create, due to the the limited support for system development and documentation provided in the standard. We present a structured analysis of the documentation and development requirements in the ISO 27001 standard. Moreover, we investigate to what extent existing security requirements engineering approaches fulfill these requirements. We developed relations between these approaches and the ISO 27001 standard using a conceptual framework originally developed for comparing security requirements engineering methods. The relations include comparisons of important terms, techniques, and documentation artifacts. In addition, we show practical applications of our results.
The discipline of engineering secure software and services brings together researchers and practitioners from software, services, and security engineering. This interdisciplinary community is fairly new, it is still not well integrated and is therefore confronted with differing perspectives, processes, methods, tools, vocabularies, and standards. We present a Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) to overcome the aforementioned problems. We capture use cases from research and practice to derive requirements for the CBK. Our CBK collects, integrates, and structures knowledge from the different disciplines based on an ontology that allows one to semantically enrich content to be able to query the CBK. The CBK heavily relies on user participation, making use of the Semantic MediaWiki as a platform to support collaborative writing. The ontology is complemented by a conceptual framework, consisting of concepts to structure the knowledge and to provide access to it, and a means to build a common terminology. We also present organizational factors covering dissemination and quality assurance.
Considering legal aspects during software development is a challenging problem, due to the cross-disciplinary expertise required. The problem is even more complex for cloud computing systems, because of the international distribution, huge amounts of processed data, and a large number of stakeholders that own or process the data. Approaches exist to deal with parts of the problem, but they are isolated from each other. We present an integrated method for elicitation of legal requirements. A cloud computing online banking scenario illustrates the application of our methods. The running example deals with the problem of storing personal information in the cloud and based upon the BDSG (German Federal Data Protection Act). We describe the structure of the online banking cloud system using an existing pattern-based approach. The elicited information is further refined and processed into functional requirements for software development. Moreover, our method covers the analysis of security-relevant concepts such as assets and attackers particularly with regard to laws. The requirements artifacts then serve as inputs for existing patterns for the identification of laws relevant for the online banking cloud system. Finally, our method helps to systematically derive functional as well as security requirements that realize the previously identified laws.
The authors present a security engineering process based on security problem frames and concretized security problem frames. Both kinds of frames constitute patterns for analyzing security problems and associated solution approaches. They are arranged in a pattern system that makes dependencies between them explicit. The authors describe step-by-step how the pattern system can be used to analyze a given security problem and how solution approaches can be found. Afterwards, the security problems and the solution approaches are formally modeled in detail. The formal models serve to prove that the solution approaches are correct solutions to the security problems. Furthermore, the formal models of the solution approaches constitute a formal specification of the software to be developed. Then, the specification is implemented by generic security components and generic security architectures, which constitute architectural patterns. Finally, the generic security components and the generic security architecture that composes them are refined and the result is a secure software product built from existing and/or tailor-made security components.
Developing security-critical systems is difficult, and there are many well-known examples of vulnerabilities exploited in practice. In fact, there has recently been a lot of work on methods, techniques, and tools to improve this situation already at the system specification and design. However, security-critical systems are increasingly long-living and undergo evolution throughout their lifetime. Therefore, a secure software development approach that supports maintaining the needed levels of security even through later software evolution is highly desirable. In this chapter, we recall the UMLsec approach to model-based security and discuss on tools and techniques to model and verify evolution of UMLsec models.
In this paper, the author aim to present a threat and risk-driven methodology to security requirements engineering. The chosen approach has a strong focus on gathering, modeling, and analyzing the environment in which a secure ICT-system to be built is located. The knowledge about the environment comprises threat and risk models. As presented in the paper, this security-relevant knowledge is used to assess the adequacy of security mechanisms, which are then selected to establish security requirements.
The Security Twin Peaks
(2011)
The ISO 27000 is a well-established series of information security standards. The scope for applying these standards can be an organisation as a whole, single business processes or even an IT application or IT infrastructure. The context establishment and the asset identification are among the first steps to be performed. The quality of the results produced when performing these steps has a crucial influence on the subsequent steps such as identifying loss, vulnerabilities, possible attacks and defining countermeasures. Thus, a context analysis to gather all necessary information in the initial steps is important, but is not offered in the standard. In this paper, we focus on the scope of cloud computing systems and present a way to support the context establishment and the asset identification described in ISO 27005. A cloud system analysis pattern and different kinds of stakeholder templates serve to understand and describe a given cloud development problem, i.e. the envisaged IT systems and the relevant parts of the operational environment. We illustrate our support using an online banking cloud scenario.
Interdisciplinary communities involve people and knowledge from different disciplines in addressing a common challenge. Differing perspectives, processes, methods, tools, vocabularies, and standards are problems that arise in this context. We present an approach to support bringing together disciplines based on a common body of knowledge (CBK), in which knowledge from different disciplines is collected, integrated, and structured. The novelty of our approach is twofold: first, it introduces a CBK ontology, which allows one to semantically enrich contents in order to be able to query the CBK in a more elaborate way afterwards. Second, it heavily relies on user participation in building up a CBK, making use of the Semantic MediaWiki as a platform to support collaborative writing. The CBK ontology is backed by a conceptual framework, consisting of concepts to structure the knowledge, to provide access options to it, and to build up a common terminology. To ensure a high quality of the provided contents and to sustain the community’s commitment, we further present organizational means as part of our approach. We demonstrate our work using the example of a Network of Excellence EU project, which aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners from services computing, security and software engineering.
This paper presents a conceptual framework for security engineering, with a strong focus on security requirements elicitation and analysis. This conceptual framework establishes a clear-cut vocabulary and makes explicit the interrelations between the different concepts and notions used in security engineering. Further, we apply our conceptual framework to compare and evaluate current security requirements engineering approaches, such as the Common Criteria, Secure Tropos, SREP, MSRA, as well as methods based on UML and problem frames. We review these methods and assess them according to different criteria, such as the general approach and scope of the method, its validation, and quality assurance capabilities. Finally, we discuss how these methods are related to the conceptual framework and to one another.
We present a threat and risk-driven methodology to security requirements engineering. Our approach has a strong focus on gathering, modeling, and analyzing the environment in which a secure ICT-system to be built is located. The knowledge about the environment comprises threat and risk models. This security-relevant knowledge is used to assess the adequacy of security mechanisms, which are selected to establish security requirements.
We present a process to develop secure software with an extensive pattern-based security requirements engineering phase. It supports identifying and analyzing conflicts between different security requirements. In the design phase, we proceed by selecting security software components that achieve security requirements. The process enables software developers to systematically identify, analyze, and finally realize security requirements using security software components. We illustrate our approach by a lawyer agency software example.
Problem frames are patterns for analyzing, structuring, and characterizing software development problems. This paper presents a formal metamodel for problem frames expressed in UML class diagrams and using the formal specification notation OCL. That metamodel clarifies the nature of the different syntactical elements of problem frames, as well as the relations between them. It provides a framework for syntactical analysis and semantic validation of newly defined problem frames, and it prepares the ground for tool support for the problem frame approach.
We present a pattern system/or security requirements engineering, consisting of security problem frames and concretized security problem frames. These are special kinds of problem frames that serve to structure, characterize, analyze, and finally solve software development problems in the area of software and system security. We equip each frame with formal preconditions and postconditions. The analysis of these conditions results in a pattern system that explicitly shows the dependencies between the different frames. Moreover, we indicate related frames, which are commonly used together with the considered frame. Hence, our approach helps security engineers to avoid omissions and to cover all security requirements that are relevant for a given problem.
Forums such as Stack Overflow are used by many software developers to find a solution for a given coding problem. Found solutions, i.e. forum posts containing relevant source code, are utilized in a copy and paste manner. This behavior carries the risk that vulnerabilities contained in the source code of the forum posts are spread. Software developers should be able to identify vulnerable source code at an early stage, thereby preventing copying the corresponding source code. In this paper, we introduce the tool CopypastaVulGuard that identifies vulnerable source code in forum posts and allows software developers to omit the source code by marking the forum posts as dangerous. Our tool consists of a browser extension and a management application capable to address as examples SQL injections, remote code executions and deprecated functions based on a dump of the archive.org Stack Overflow data set. We present an evaluation of our tool's possible impact and relevance considering pros/cons and selected research questions.
Preserving Software Quality Characteristics from Requirements Analysis to Architectural Design
(2006)
We give an enumeration of possible problem frames, based on domain characteristics, and comment on the usefulness of the obtained frames. In particular, we investigate problem domains and their characteristics in detail. This leads to fine-grained criteria for describing problem domains. As a result, we identify a new type of problem domain and come up with integrity conditions for developing useful problem frames. Taking a complete enumeration of possible problem frames (with at most three problem domains, of which only one is constrained) as a basis, we find 8 new problem frames, 7 of which we consider as useful in practical software development.
We present a security engineering process based on security problem frames and concretized security problem frames. Both kinds of frames constitute patterns for analyzing security problems and associated solution approaches. They are arranged in a pattern system that makes dependencies between them explicit. We describe step-by-step how the pattern system can be used to analyze a given security problem and how solution approaches can be found. Further, we introduce a new frame that focuses on the privacy requirement anonymity.
Der Bereich der Informationssicherheit stellt große und insbesondere kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) vor erhebliche Herausforderungen. Zunehmende Angriffe auf IT-Systeme und Infrastrukturen haben die Informationssicherheit zum kritischen Erfolgsfaktor gemacht. Neben klassischen Zielen und Bereichen der Informationssicherheit hat vor allem die Security Awareness - das Sicherheitsbewusstsein aller Mitarbeiter eines Unternehmens - an Bedeutung gewonnen. Security Awareness bezieht sich auf jegliches Wissen und Handeln der Mitarbeiter eines Unternehmens und ist daher ein bedeutsamer Baustein zur ganzheitlichen Gewährleistung von Informationssicherheit. Die Motivation zur Entwicklung und Einführung von Informationssicherheit und insbesondere Security Awareness geht in großen Unternehmen vor allem von externen Faktoren, so z. B. der Regulierung von Branchen, aus und ist mittels globaler Standards, Normen und Frameworks implementiert. KMU sind grundsätzlich keinen geringeren Risiken als große Unternehmen ausgesetzt, verfügen jedoch nur selten über vergleichbare Schutzmaßnahmen hinsichtlich Informationssicherheit. Im Rahmen des Projekts wurden externe Anforderungen für große Unternehmen analysiert und hinsichtlich der Eignung als Grundlage für KMU bewertet. Das Projekt thematisiert weiterhin die Messbarkeit von Security Awareness sowie die in großen Unternehmen eingesetzten Maßnahmen zur Gewährleistung von Security Awareness besonders hinsichtlich ihrer Eignung für KMU.
In this paper, we present an approach to adopt UMLsec, which is defined for UML 1.5, to support the current UML version 2.3. The new profile UMLsec4UML2 is technically constructed as a UML profile diagram, which is equipped with a number of integrity conditions expressed using OCL. Consequently, the UMLsec4UML2-profile can be loaded in any Eclipse-based EMF- and MDT-compatible UML editing tool to develop and analyze different kinds of security models. The OCL constraints replace the static checks of the tool support for the old UMLsec defined for UML 1.5. Thus, the UMLsec4UML2-profile not only provides the whole expresiveness of UML2.3 for security modeling, it also brings considerably more freedom in selecting a basic UML editing tool, and it integrates modeling and analyzing security models. Since UML2.3 comprises new diagram types, as well as new model elements and new semantics of diagram types already contained in UML1.5, we consider a number of these changes in detail. More specifically, we consider composite structure and sequence diagrams with respect to modeling security properties according to the original version of UMLsec. The goal is to use UMLsec4UML2 to specify architectural security patterns.