TY - JOUR
T1 - Syntactic and Semantic Extensions to Secure Tropos to Support Security Risk Management
AU - Matulevicius, Raimundas
AU - Mouratidis, Haralambos
AU - Mayer, Nicolas
AU - Dubois, Eric
AU - Heymans, Patrick
PY - 2012/1/1
Y1 - 2012/1/1
N2 - The need to consider security from the early stages of the development process of information systems has been argued by academics and industrialists alike, and security risk management has been recognised as one of the most prominent techniques for eliciting security requirements. However, although existing security modelling languages provide some means to model security aspects, they do not contain concrete constructs to address vulnerable system assets, their risks, and risk treatments. Furthermore, security languages do not provide a crosscutting viewpoint relating all three - assets, risks and risk treatments - together. This is problematic since, for a security analyst, it is difficult to detect what the potential security flaws could be, and how they need to be fixed. In this paper, we extend the Secure Tropos language, an agent and goal-oriented security modelling language to support modelling of security risks. Based on previous work, where we had observed some inadequacies of this language to modelsecurity risks, this paper suggests improvements of Secure Tropos semantics and syntax. On the syntax level we extend the concrete and abstract syntax of the language, so that it covers the security risk management domain. On the semantic level, we illustrate how language constructs need to be improved to address the three different levels of security risk management. The suggested improvements are illustrated with the aid of a running example, called eSAP, from the healthcare domain.
AB - The need to consider security from the early stages of the development process of information systems has been argued by academics and industrialists alike, and security risk management has been recognised as one of the most prominent techniques for eliciting security requirements. However, although existing security modelling languages provide some means to model security aspects, they do not contain concrete constructs to address vulnerable system assets, their risks, and risk treatments. Furthermore, security languages do not provide a crosscutting viewpoint relating all three - assets, risks and risk treatments - together. This is problematic since, for a security analyst, it is difficult to detect what the potential security flaws could be, and how they need to be fixed. In this paper, we extend the Secure Tropos language, an agent and goal-oriented security modelling language to support modelling of security risks. Based on previous work, where we had observed some inadequacies of this language to modelsecurity risks, this paper suggests improvements of Secure Tropos semantics and syntax. On the syntax level we extend the concrete and abstract syntax of the language, so that it covers the security risk management domain. On the semantic level, we illustrate how language constructs need to be improved to address the three different levels of security risk management. The suggested improvements are illustrated with the aid of a running example, called eSAP, from the healthcare domain.
KW - syntax and semantics of modelling language
KW - secure tropos
KW - risk management
KW - information system
KW - security
M3 - Article
SP - 816
EP - 844
JO - Journal of Universal Computer Science
JF - Journal of Universal Computer Science
IS - 6
ER -