Security-driven model-based dynamic adaptation

Abstract

Security is a key-challenge for software engineering, especially when considering access control and software evolutions. No satisfying solution exists for maintaining the alignment of access control policies with the business logic. Current implementations of access control rely on the separation between the policy and the application code. In practice, this separation is not so strict and some rules are hard-coded within the application, making the evolution of the policy difficult. We propose a new methodology for implementing security-driven applications. From a policy defined by a security expert, we generate an architectural model, reflecting the access control policy. We leverage the advances in the models@runtime domain to keep this model synchronized with the running system. When the policy is updated, the architectural model is updated, which in turn reconfigures the running system. As a proof of concept, we apply the approach to the development of a library management system.