A Dependability Assessment Process for Ensuring Consistent Provisioning of Network Recovery

AbstractWe have developed an engineering method to detect errors in provisioning automated recovery processes in multilayer and multi-protocol communications transport networks. Our dependability assessment process leverages inference techniques provided by Semantic Web technologies in order to detect network-device provisioning errors. Provisioning should be accompanied by methodologies, processes, and activities to ensure that it can be trusted to achieve a desired network state. Our method takes into account unique constraints in the telecommunications domain including bottom-up evolution of physical layer technologies to provide connectivity and lack of a universal model of network functionality. We apply our method to assessing the correctness of provisioning decisions for a protection switching application in a transport network in both the spatial and temporal domains

Pattern-based security requirements specification using ontologies and boilerplates

The task of specifying and managing security requirements (SR) is a challenging one. Usually SR are often neglected or considered too late - leading to poor design, and cost overruns. Also, there is scarce expertise in managing SR, because most requirements engineering teams do not include security experts, which leads to prevalence of too vague or overly specific SR. In this work, we present an ontology-based approach that uses predefined pattern-based templates - requirements boilerplates - to aid requirements engineers in the formulation of SR. We realized the approach via a prototype tool that enables the formulation of SR from textual misuse case (TMUC) descriptions of security threat scenarios. The results from a preliminary evaluation suggest the viability of the proposed approach, in that the tool was judged as easy to use, supports reuse, and facilitates the formulation of good quality SR