When security meets software engineering: a case of modelling secure information systems

Using a Situational Method Engineering Approach to Identify Reusable Method Fragments from the Secure TROPOS Methodology.

“…[5] and then discuss the extensions made in the published literature that have created Secure Tropos [42]. The Tropos methodology [5,6,12,20,46] was designed to support agent-oriented systems development, with a particular emphasis on the early requirements engineering phase.…”

“…In particular, the methodology demonstrates limitations with respect to security in its process as well as in its concepts. For example, the process of integrating security and functional requirements throughout the whole range of the development stages is quite ad hoc; the concept of a soft goal used in Tropos to capture security requirements fails to adequately capture some of the associated security constraints [37,42]; and the lack of definition of the Tropos concepts with security in mind makes the distinction between security and other requirements difficult. Therefore, the basic Tropos methodology was enhanced to better model security during the development process of a multi-agent system [41] -albeit the resultant Secure Tropos is a single methodological entity not espousing SME concepts.…”

“…Two existing work products in the repository require extension: security-enhanced actor diagram and security-enhanced goal diagram. Name Architectural style selection diagram Description: This diagram ( Figure 15) uses Tropos-like notation and is used to model architectural styles, security properties and security requirements of the system under development and the different contributions that each architectural style has on the security properties and the security requirements of the system [42]. In this diagram, a hexagon represents a security solution, while an emboldened cloud represents a non-functional requirement of the system.…”

“…In this paper, we synergistically combine the SE sub-disciplines of agents, SME and security and focus on the identification for inclusion in the OPF repository of security-related method fragments from an existing AOSE source, that source being the Secure Tropos agent-oriented methodology [37,42]. An important feature of the chosen Secure Tropos methodology is that security requirements of the system under development can be traced back to early requirements.…”

Learning from Software Security Testing

“…New security vulnerabilities are still being discovered in internet-accessible applications at a steady pace, and it seems as though the average developer not only suffers from a lack of interest in security [1,2], but also is incapable of learning from past mistakes [3]. In our opinion, there is thus an increased need of security also in the average software development project, and we have argued for lightweight techniques that are suitable for ensuring security in the asset identification [4], requirements elicitation [5], and design [6] phases of software development.…”