Threats Management Throughout the Software Service Life-Cycle

Software services are inevitably exposed to a fluctuating threat picture. Unfortunately, not all threats can be handled only with preventive measures during design and development, but also require adaptive mitigations at runtime. In this paper we describe an approach where we model composite services and threats together, which allows us to create preventive measures at design-time. At runtime, our specification also allows the service runtime environment (SRE) to receive alerts about active threats that we have not handled, and react to these automatically through adaptation of the composite service. A goal-oriented security requirements modelling tool is used to model business-level threats and analyse how they may impact goals. A process flow modelling tool, utilising Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and standard error boundary events, allows us to define how threats should be responded to during service execution on a technical level. Throughout the software life-cycle, we maintain threats in a centralised threat repository. Re-use of these threats extends further into monitoring alerts being distributed through a cloud-based messaging service. To demonstrate our approach in practice, we have developed a proof-of-concept service for the Air Traffic Management (ATM) domain. In addition to the design-time activities, we show how this composite service duly adapts itself when a service component is exposed to a threat at runtime.Comment: In Proceedings GraMSec 2014, arXiv:1404.163

Information standards to support application and enterprise interoperability for the smart grid

Copyright @ 2012 IEEE.Current changes in the European electricity industry are driven by regulatory directives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as replacing aged infrastructure and maintaining energy security. There is a wide acceptance of the requirement for smarter grids to support such changes and accommodate variable injections from renewable energy sources. However the design templates are still emerging to manage the level of information required to meet challenges such as balancing, planning and market dynamics under this new paradigm. While secure and scalable cloud computing architectures may contribute to supporting the informatics challenges of the smart grid, this paper focuses on the essential need for business alignment with standardised information models such as the IEC Common Information Model (CIM), to leverage data value and control system interoperability. In this paper we present details of use cases being considered by National Grid, the GB transmission system operator for information interoperability in pan-network system management and planning.This study is financially supported by the National Grid, UK

Evaluating Trustworthiness of Software Component

Makalah ini membahas tentang konsep keterpercayaan komponen perangkat lunak yang merupakan salah satu pertimbangan utama bagi pengembang perangkat lunak dalam mengimplementasikan metode pengembangan perangkat lunak berbasis komponen. Pada bagian awal makalah, penulis menjelaskan mengenai konsep penggunaan ulang perangkat lunak dan kaitannya dengan keterpercayaan komponen perangkat lunak. Selanjutnya, bagian inti makalah membahas secara detail mengenai metode pengujian komponen perangkat lunak dan 4 (empat) metode yang dapat digunakan untuk mengevaluasi tingkat keterpercayaan dari komponen perangkat lunak. Di akhir makalah, penulis memberi gambaran mengenai proses seleksi komponen perangkat lunak pada domain industri

Trustworthiness Requirements in Information Systems Design: Lessons Learned from the Blockchain Community

In modern society, where digital security is a major preoccupation, the perception of trust is undergoing fundamental transformations. Blockchain community created a substantial body of knowledge on design and development of trustworthy information systems and digital trust. Yet, little research is focused on broader scope and other forms of trust. In this study, we review the research literature reporting on design and development of blockchain solutions and focus on trustworthiness requirements that drive these solutions. Our findings show that digital trust is not the only form of trust that the organizations seek to reenforce: trust in technology and social trust remain powerful drivers in decision making. We analyze 56 primary studies, extract and formulate a set of 21 trustworthiness requirements. While originated from blockchain literature, the formulated requirements are technology-neutral: they aim at supporting business and technology experts in translating their trust issues into specific design decisions and in rationalizing their technological choices. To bridge the gap between social and technological domains, we associate the trustworthiness requirements with three trustworthiness factors defined in the social science: ability, benevolence and integrity

Decision support for choice of security solution: the Aspect-Oriented Risk Driven Development (AORDD)framework

In security assessment and management there is no single correct solution to the identified security problems or challenges. Instead there are only choices and tradeoffs. The main reason for this is that modern information systems and security critical information systems in particular must perform at the contracted or expected security level, make effective use of available resources and meet end-users' expectations. Balancing these needs while also fulfilling development, project and financial perspectives, such as budget and TTM constraints, mean that decision makers have to evaluate alternative security solutions.\ud \ud This work describes parts of an approach that supports decision makers in choosing one or a set of security solutions among alternatives. The approach is called the Aspect-Oriented Risk Driven Development (AORDD) framework, combines Aspect-Oriented Modeling (AOM) and Risk Driven Development (RDD) techniques and consists of the seven components: (1) An iterative AORDD process. (2) Security solution aspect repository. (3) Estimation repository to store experience from estimation of security risks and security solution variables involved in security solution decisions. (4) RDD annotation rules for security risk and security solution variable estimation. (5) The AORDD security solution trade-off analysis and trade-o¤ tool BBN topology. (6) Rule set for how to transfer RDD information from the annotated UML diagrams into the trad-off tool BBN topology. (7) Trust-based information aggregation schema to aggregate disparate information in the trade-o¤ tool BBN topology. This work focuses on components 5 and 7, which are the two core components in the AORDD framework

Adapting Quality Assurance to Adaptive Systems: The Scenario Coevolution Paradigm

From formal and practical analysis, we identify new challenges that self-adaptive systems pose to the process of quality assurance. When tackling these, the effort spent on various tasks in the process of software engineering is naturally re-distributed. We claim that all steps related to testing need to become self-adaptive to match the capabilities of the self-adaptive system-under-test. Otherwise, the adaptive system's behavior might elude traditional variants of quality assurance. We thus propose the paradigm of scenario coevolution, which describes a pool of test cases and other constraints on system behavior that evolves in parallel to the (in part autonomous) development of behavior in the system-under-test. Scenario coevolution offers a simple structure for the organization of adaptive testing that allows for both human-controlled and autonomous intervention, supporting software engineering for adaptive systems on a procedural as well as technical level.Comment: 17 pages, published at ISOLA 201

Systematic Review on Security and Privacy Requirements in Edge Computing: State of the Art and Future Research Opportunities

Edge computing is a promising paradigm that enhances the capabilities of cloud computing. In order to continue patronizing the computing services, it is essential to conserve a good atmosphere free from all kinds of security and privacy breaches. The security and privacy issues associated with the edge computing environment have narrowed the overall acceptance of the technology as a reliable paradigm. Many researchers have reviewed security and privacy issues in edge computing, but not all have fully investigated the security and privacy requirements. Security and privacy requirements are the objectives that indicate the capabilities as well as functions a system performs in eliminating certain security and privacy vulnerabilities. The paper aims to substantially review the security and privacy requirements of the edge computing and the various technological methods employed by the techniques used in curbing the threats, with the aim of helping future researchers in identifying research opportunities. This paper investigate the current studies and highlights the following: (1) the classification of security and privacy requirements in edge computing, (2) the state of the art techniques deployed in curbing the security and privacy threats, (3) the trends of technological methods employed by the techniques, (4) the metrics used for evaluating the performance of the techniques, (5) the taxonomy of attacks affecting the edge network, and the corresponding technological trend employed in mitigating the attacks, and, (6) research opportunities for future researchers in the area of edge computing security and privacy

Challenges to describe QoS requirements for web services quality prediction to support web services interoperability in electronic commerce

Quality of service (QoS) is significant and necessary for web service applications quality assurance. Furthermore, web services quality has contributed to the successful implementation of Electronic Commerce (EC) applications. However, QoS is still the big issue for web services research and remains one of the main research questions that need to be explored. We believe that QoS should not only be measured but should also be predicted during the development and implementation stages. However, there are challenges and constraints to determine and choose QoS requirements for high quality web services. Therefore, this paper highlights the challenges for the QoS requirements prediction as they are not easy to identify. Moreover, there are many different perspectives and purposes of web services, and various prediction techniques to describe QoS requirements. Additionally, the paper introduces a metamodel as a concept of what makes a good web service