To this aim, SecFutur has developed a new security
modelling framework and an associated engineering
process that can flexibly integrate security consider-
ations into the system design and can be easily in-
corporated into existing engineering processes. The
security solutions are provided in terms of SecFutur
Patterns (SFP) and Security Building Blocks (SBBs)
(Grawrock, 2009) (Pearson, 2002), which integrate
existing hardware and software security mechanisms
in order to provide complex security properties. The
architecture of the SecFutur Modelling Framework
(Jose Fran. Ruiz and Ma
˜
na, 2011) is based on the
UML metamodeling capabilities and is composed of
three different layers that cover different objectives.
To illustrate our experience we use a real-world
emergency response scenario. More concretely, we
focus on the establishment of a secure ad-hoc wire-
less mesh communication, which is a key component
in the domain of spontaneous broadband communi-
cation among crisis management vehicles. The com-
munication between the vehicles occurs on a tactical
level, without any fixed or deployable communica-
tion infrastructure available. Depending on the type
of emergency or crisis, the fixed and deployed infras-
tructure may be totally destroyed or partially avail-
able. In the latter case, the tactical communication is
augmented with backhaul links to headquarters.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: in
Section 2, we describe the state of the art of the cur-
rent modelling and engineering processes. Section 3
presents the proposed security engineering process.
Section 4 describes the real-world scenario we use as
an example. Section 5 contains the modelling of the
scenario and Section 6 discusses the benefits and con-
clusions of the engineering process.
2 RELATED WORK
Currently, although some companies use security en-
gineering processes in the development of their sys-
tems, usually, these practices for modelling systems
with security properties consist of a traditional sys-
tem modelling, subsequent implementation and test-
ing, combined with ad-hoc methods (”gut feeling”) to
define security issues and, in the best cases, some iso-
lated systematic threat modelling. Most of the times
those issues are only considered after the architectural
and functional design of the system.
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has be-
come the de-facto standard notation for system devel-
opment. This language is well supported by platforms
and tools and suited for defining designs at high ab-
straction levels. It offers an excellent opportunity to
close the gap between software and security engineer-
ing and to support the development of security-critical
systems in an industrial setting. Although originally
not based on UML, the work proposed in (Peter Her-
rmann, 2006) includes an extension intended to sup-
port the development of an abstract UML-based busi-
ness process specification.
UMLsec (J
¨
urjens, 2001) is proposed as an ex-
tension of UML for modelling security properties
of computer systems. Unfortunately, UMLsec only
addresses a few specific security requirements and
doesn’t allow to create complex or composed ones
that can be necessary for a specific scenario.
Model Driven Security (Basin et al., 2003) is a
specialization of the MDA approach that proposes
a modular approach combining languages for mod-
elling system design with languages for modelling se-
curity. One of these languages for modelling security,
called SecureUML (T. Tryfonas, 2001), is only used
to describe role-based access control policies.
Another recent approach proposes to integrate se-
curity and systems engineering using elements of
UML within the Tropos methodology (Castro et al.,
2001) and (Mouratidis et al., 2003). This approach is
a requirement-driven process, therefore it collects all
the requirements and the system is modeled as a com-
position of subsystems interconnected through data.
The complexity of obtaining how the actors interact
and the sequence of their actions hinders a friendly
approach to this engineering process. Also, the engi-
neer needs to have specific knowledge of the scenario
and the necessary security properties to fulfill them.
Another interesting approach to the introduction
of security, focused on the concept of risk, in the de-
velopment cycle is presented in (Dimitrakos et al.,
2002). This process begins with a rigorous analysis
of the context, collecting different aspects and con-
cerns such as the specific requirements. The risks
are identified and analyzed, in order to be included in
later stages of the process, but this approach merges
entities with different natures and behaviors such as
threats, vulnerabilities or incidents, treating them in
the same way and ignoring their own characteristics.
Finally, on the conceptual level, the Systems Se-
curity Engineering Capability Maturity Model (SSE-
CMM) (SSE-CMM, ) highlights the relationship be-
tween security engineering and systems engineering,
regarding the former as an integral part of the latter
and not an end by itself. On the other hand it does not
provide any concrete realization of the proposed inte-
grated treatment of security and systems engineering.
This overview shows that, based on the variety
of different approaches, and although several specific
properties can be considered more or less rigorously
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