Towards an architectural treatment of software security: a connector-centric approach

ABSTRACT

Security is a very important concern for software architecture and software components. Previous modeling approaches provide insufficient support for an in-depth treatment of security. This paper argues for a more comprehensive treatment based on software connectors. Connectors provide a suitable vehicle to model, capture, and enforce security. Our approach models security principal, privilege, trust, and context of architectural constituents. Extending our existing architecture description language and support tools, our approach can facilitate describing the security characteristics of an architecture generating enabling infrastructure, and monitoring run-time conformance. Initial results of applying this approach are illustrated through a case study. The contribution of this research is a deeper and more comprehensive treatment of architectural security through software connectors.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Security

Keywords:
secure software connector, security, software architecture