Towards Effective Security Assurance for Incremental Software Development the Case of Zen Cart Application

Abstract

Incremental software development methods, such as Scrum embrace code changes to meet changing customer requirements. However, changing the code of a given software invalidates the security assurance of the software. Thus, each new version of a given software requires a new full security assessment. This paper investigates the impact of incremental development of software on their security assurances using the e-commerce software Zen Cart as a case study. It also describes a prototype we are developing to design security assurance cases and trace the impact of code changes on the security assurance of the given software. A security assurance case shows how a claim, such as "The system is acceptably secure" is supported by objective evidence.