Model-Driven Security in Practice: An Industrial Experience

Abstract

In this paper we report on our experience on using the so-called model-driven security approach in an MDA industrial project. In model-driven security, “designers specify system models along with their security requirements and use tools to automatically generate system architectures from the models.” Our report includes a discussion of the languages that we used to model both the functional and the security system’s requirements, as well as a description of the transformation function that we developed to build from the security-design models the system’s access control infrastructure. The report concludes with the lessons about the feasibility and practical industrial relevance of the model-driven security approach that we learned from this experience.

Research partially supported by Spanish MEC projects TIN2005-09207-C03-03 and TIN2006-15660-C02-01, and by Comunidad de Madrid Program S-0505/TIC/0407. In addition, Christiano Braga’s and Viviane Silva’s research is supported, respectively, by the “Ramón y Cajal” and “Juan de la Cierva” Spanish MEC postdoctoral programmes, and Marina Egea’s research by a Spanish MEC predoctoral grant.