An Aspect-based Approach for Analyzing Security System Architectures

University Of Texas At Dallas, Richardson TX

Investigators

Abstract

Security system architecture, which defines structure of the system, the interaction and coordination among its components, has profound impacts on the security system' performance, reliability, interoperability and consistency among other critical properties. The purpose of this project is to develop a formal methodology to model security systems architectures and to assess key quality attributes of the composition. The proposed methodology has several integrated elements: First, an aspect-based architecture modeling framework is developed, which organized heterogeneous system properties into self-contained and yet integrated multi-level aspect models. Each aspect model can be constructed, changed and analyzed individually with minimal burden of complexity from the other models. Second, architecture-based constraint patterns are investigated. These constraint patterns define what conditions or properties that each component and their composition must satisfy under a security architecture. Based on the aspect architecture models, techniques will be developed to decompose system-wide constraint patterns onto individual components and to verify the consistency between global and component constraints. These patterns are the behavioral basis for checking and assuring end-to-end properties in system composition. Third, mature but individually homogeneous analysis techniques will be combined into a flexible and scalable method for analyzing the aspect models against their constraint patterns.