A Policy Specification Language for Composite Services

Creating complex systems by combining smaller component services is one of the fundamental concepts in Service Oriented Architecture. Service compositions are built by combining loosely coupled services that are, usually, offered and operated by different service providers. While this approach offers several benefits, it makes the implementation and representation of the security requirements difficult. This paper reviews several requirement specification languages and analyses their suitability for composite services. A set of requirements is identified and a comparison between different specification languages is presented along with some conclusion on the suitability of each language in expressing security requirements for composite services

On the Security of Software Systems and Services

This work investigates new methods for facing the security issues and threats arising from the composition of software. This task has been carried out through the formal modelling of both the software composition scenarios and the security properties, i.e., policies, to be guaranteed. Our research moves across three different modalities of software composition which are of main interest for some of the most sensitive aspects of the modern information society. They are mobile applications, trust-based composition and service orchestration. Mobile applications are programs designed for being deployable on remote platforms. Basically, they are the main channel for the distribution and commercialisation of software for mobile devices, e.g., smart phones and tablets. Here we study the security threats that affect the application providers and the hosting platforms. In particular, we present a programming framework for the development of applications with a static and dynamic security support. Also, we implemented an enforcement mechanism for applying fine-grained security controls on the execution of possibly malicious applications. In addition to security, trust represents a pragmatic and intuitive way for managing the interactions among systems. Currently, trust is one of the main factors that human beings keep into account when deciding whether to accept a transaction or not. In our work we investigate the possibility of defining a fully integrated environment for security policies and trust including a runtime monitor. Finally, Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is the leading technology for business applications distributed over a network. The security issues related to the service networks are many and multi-faceted. We mainly deal with the static verification of secure composition plans of web services. Moreover, we introduce the synthesis of dynamic security checks for protecting the services against illegal invocations

Modelling, validating, and ranking of secure service compositions

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordIn the world of large-scale applications, software as a service (SaaS) in general and use of microservices, in particular, is bringing service-oriented architectures to a new level: Systems in general and systems that interact with human users (eg, sociotechnical systems) in particular are built by composing microservices that are developed independently and operated by different parties. At the same time, SaaS applications are used more and more widely by enterprises as well as public services for providing critical services, including those processing security or privacy of relevant data. Therefore, providing secure and reliable service compositions is increasingly needed to ensure the success of SaaS solutions. Building such service compositions securely is still an unsolved problem. In this paper, we present a framework for modelling, validating, and ranking secure service compositions that integrate both automated services as well as services that interact with humans. As a unique feature, our approach for ranking services integrates validated properties (eg, based on the result of formally analysing the source code of a service implementation) as well as contractual properties that are part of the service level agreement and, thus, not necessarily ensured on a technical level

Developing a Generic Debugger for Advanced-Dispatching Languages

Programming-language research has introduced a considerable number of advanced-dispatching mechanisms in order to improve modularity. Advanced-dispatching mechanisms allow changing the behavior of a function without modifying their call sites and thus make the local behavior of code less comprehensible. Debuggers are tools, thus needed, which can help a developer to comprehend program behavior but current debuggers do not provide inspection of advanced-\ud dispatching-related language constructs. In this paper, we present a debugger which extends a traditional Java debugger with the ability of debugging an advanced-dispatching language constructs and a user interface for inspecting this

Security policy monitoring of BPMN-based service compositions

Service composition is a key concept of Service- Oriented Architecture that allows for combining loosely coupled services that are offered and operated by different service providers. Such environments are expected to dynamically respond to changes that may occur at runtime, including changes in the environment and individual services themselves. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor these loosely-coupled services throughout their lifetime. In this paper, we present a novel framework for monitoring services at runtime and ensuring that services behave as they have promised. In particular, we focus on monitoring non-functional properties that are specified within an agreed security contract. The novelty of our work is based on the way in which monitoring information can be combined from multiple dynamic services to automate the monitoring of business processes and proactively report compliance violations. The framework enables monitoring of both atomic and composite services and provides a user friendly interface for specifying the monitoring policy. We provide an information service case study using a real composite service to demonstrate how we achieve compliance monitoring. The transformation of security policy into monitoring rules, which is done automatically, makes our framework more flexible and accurate than existing techniques

Security Policy Monitoring of BPMN-based Service Compositions

Service composition is a key concept of Service-Oriented Architecture that allows for combining loosely coupled services that are offered and operated by different service providers. Such environments are expected to dynamically respond to changes that may occur at runtime, including changes in the environment and individual services themselves. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor these loosely-coupled services throughout their lifetime. In this paper, we present a novel framework for monitoring services at runtime and ensuring that services behave as they have promised. In particular, we focus on monitoring non-functional properties that are specified within an agreed security contract. The novelty of our work is based on the way in which monitoring information can be combined from multiple dynamic services to automate the monitoring of business processes and proactively report compliance violations. The framework enables monitoring of both atomic and composite services and provides a user friendly interface for specifying the monitoring policy. We provide an information service case study using a real composite service to demonstrate how we achieve compliance monitoring. The transformation of security policy into monitoring rules, which is done automatically, makes our framework more flexible and accurate than existing techniques