assessment projects can be notified of this new
information after the next download of the central
knowledge base. The assessment teams can mark the
new information as “irrelevant” or “mitigated”, but
they have to provide a reasoning why the
vulnerability, threat, etc. is not relevant in their
system.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The ESSAF framework enables the collaborative,
structured documentation of an embedded system’s
architecture, its components and their security
objectives and security measures as a basis for a
systematic analysis of vulnerabilities and threats to
the system. This allows for informed decisions about
a mitigation strategy for the identified
vulnerabilities. Because assumptions and the
reasoning behind evaluations are documented, the
traceability of the results is ensured.
The analysis can be carried out by system
designers and developers, who do not need to be
security experts, as part of their daily work. The
assessment information can evolve gradually as
more information is provided by different
stakeholders. The resulting documentation serves as
the basis for further analysis by a security expert,
who can save effort in data collection. The data
structure also allows for the use of a knowledge base
that can assist in the identification of inconsistencies
and possible vulnerabilities.
No information about concrete use cases is
needed for the analysis and rating of vulnerabilities,
especially no probability or monetary impact figures
have to be indicated. This supports the use of the
method during the design and development of
embedded systems that may be deployed in very
diverse settings later. The supporting software tool
enables the structuring of information.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Swiss
Confederation’s innovation promotion agency CTI.
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