XRound : A reversible template language and its application in model-based security analysis

Successful analysis of the models used in Model-Driven Development requires the ability to synthesise the results of analysis and automatically integrate these results with the models themselves. This paper presents a reversible template language called XRound which supports round-trip transformations between models and the logic used to encode system properties. A template processor that supports the language is described, and the use of the template language is illustrated by its application in an analysis workbench, designed to support analysis of security properties of UML and MOF-based models. As a result of using reversible templates, it is possible to seamlessly and automatically integrate the results of a security analysis with a model. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Towards a foundation for holistic power system validation and testing

Renewable energy sources and further electrificationof energy consumption are key enablers for decreasing green-house gas emissions, but also introduce increased complexitywithin the electric power system. The increased availability ofautomation, information and communication technology, andintelligent solutions for system operation have transformed thepower system into a smart grid. In order to support thedevelopment process of smart grid solutions on the system level,testing has to be done in a holistic manner, covering the multi-domain aspect of such complex systems. This paper introducesthe concept of holistic power system testing and discuss first stepstowards a corresponding methodology that is being developed inthe European ERIGrid research infrastructure project.Comment: 2016 IEEE 21st International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA

The pros and cons of using SDL for creation of distributed services

In a competitive market for the creation of complex distributed services, time to market, development cost, maintenance and flexibility are key issues. Optimizing the development process is very much a matter of optimizing the technologies used during service creation. This paper reports on the experience gained in the Service Creation projects SCREEN and TOSCA on use of the language SDL for efficient service creation

Controlling services in a mobile context-aware infrastructure

Context-aware application behaviors can be described as logic rules following the Event-Control-Action (ECA) pattern. In this pattern, an Event models an occurrence of interest (e.g., a change in context); Control specifies a condition that must hold prior to the execution of the action; and an Action represents the invocation of arbitrary services. We have defined a Controlling service aiming at facilitating the dynamic configuration of ECA rule specifications by means of a mobile rule engine and a mechanism that distributes context reasoning activities to a network of context processing nodes. In this paper we present a novel context modeling approach that provides application developers and users with more appropriate means to define context information and ECA rules. Our approach makes use of ontologies to model context information and has been developed on top of web services technology

Semantic security: specification and enforcement of semantic policies for security-driven collaborations

Collaborative research can often have demands on finer-grained security that go beyond the authentication-only paradigm as typified by many e-Infrastructure/Grid based solutions. Supporting finer-grained access control is often essential for domains where the specification and subsequent enforcement of authorization policies is needed. The clinical domain is one area in particular where this is so. However it is the case that existing security authorization solutions are fragile, inflexible and difficult to establish and maintain. As a result they often do not meet the needs of real world collaborations where robustness and flexibility of policy specification and enforcement, and ease of maintenance are essential. In this paper we present results of the JISC funded Advanced Grid Authorisation through Semantic Technologies (AGAST) project (www.nesc.ac.uk/hub/projects/agast) and show how semantic-based approaches to security policy specification and enforcement can address many of the limitations with existing security solutions. These are demonstrated into the clinical trials domain through the MRC funded Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) project (www.nesc.ac.uk/hub/projects/votes) and the epidemiological domain through the JISC funded SeeGEO project (www.nesc.ac.uk/hub/projects/seegeo)

Comparison of advanced authorisation infrastructures for grid computing

The widespread use of grid technology and distributed compute power, with all its inherent benefits, will only be established if the use of that technology can be guaranteed efficient and secure. The predominant method for currently enforcing security is through the use of public key infrastructures (PKI) to support authentication and the use of access control lists (ACL) to support authorisation. These systems alone do not provide enough fine-grained control over the restriction of user rights, necessary in a dynamic grid environment. This paper compares the implementation and experiences of using the current standard for grid authorisation with Globus - the grid security infrastructure (GSI) - with the role-based access control (RBAC) authorisation infrastructure PERMIS. The suitability of these security infrastructures for integration with regard to existing grid technology is presented based upon experiences within the JISC-funded DyVOSE project