Jose A. Montenegro

A business process-driven approach to security engineering

A challenging task in security engineering concerns the specification and integration of security with other requirements at the top level of requirements engineering. Empirical studies show that it is common that end users are able to express their security needs at the business process level. Since many security requirements originate at this level, it is natural to try to capture and express them within the context of business models where end users feel most comfortable and where they conceptually belong. In this paper, we develop these views, present an ongoing work intended to create a UML-based and business process-driven framework for the development of security-critical systems and propose an approach to a rigorous treatment of security requirements supported by formal methods.

Specification and design of advanced authentication and authorization services

A challenging task in security engineering concerns the specification and integration of security with other requirements at the top level of requirements engineering. Empirical studies show that it is common at the business process level that customers and end users are able to express their security needs. Among the security needs of Internet applications, authentication and authorization services are outstanding and, sometimes, privacy becomes a parallel requirement. In this paper, we introduce a methodology for the specification of security requirements and use a case study to apply our solution. We further detail the resulting system after extending it with an Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure.

A reference model for Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures respecting privacy and flexibility in b2c eCommerce

Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures (AAIs) are gaining momentum throughout the Internet. Solutions have been proposed for various scenarios among them academia, grid computing, company networks, and above all eCommerce applications. Products and concepts vary in architecture, security features, target group, and usability containing different strengths and weaknesses. In addition security needs have changed in communication and business processes. Security on the Internet is no longer defined as only security measures for an eCommerce provider against an untrustworthy customer but also vice versa. Consequently, privacy, data canniness, and security are demands in this area. The authors define criteria for an eCommerce provider federation using an AAI with a maximum of privacy and flexibility. The criteria is derived concentrating on b2c eCommerce applications fulfilling the demands. In addition to best practices found, XACML policies and an attribute infrastructure are deployed. Among the evaluated AAIs are Shibboleth, Microsoft Passport, the Liberty Alliance Framework, and PERMIS.

Towards a Business Process-Driven Framework for Security Engineering with the UML

A challenging task in security engineering concerns the specification and integration of security with other requirements at the top level of requirements engineering. Empirical studies show that it is commonly at the business process level that customers and end users are able to express their security needs. In addition, systems are often developed by automating existing manual business processes. Since many security notions belongs conceptually to the world of business processes, it is natural to try to capture and express them in the context of business models in which moreover customers and end users feel most comfortable. In this paper, based on experience drawn from an ongoing work within the CASENET project [1], we propose a UML-based business process-driven framework for the development of security-critical systems.

A representation model of trust relationships with delegation extensions

Logic languages establish a formal framework to solve authorization and delegation conflicts. However, we consider that a visual representation is necessary since graphs are more expressive and understandable than logic languages. In this paper, and after overviewing previous works using logic languages, we present a proposal for graph representation of authorization and delegation statements. Our proposal is based on Varadharajan et al. solution, though improve several elements of that work. We also discuss about the possible implementation of our proposal using attribute certificates.

Pervasive authentication and authorization infrastructures for mobile users

Network and device heterogeneity, nomadic mobility, intermittent connectivity and, more generally, extremely dynamic operating conditions, are major challenges in the design of security infrastructures for pervasive computing. Yet, in a ubiquitous computing environment, limitations of traditional solutions for authentication and authorization can be overcome with a pervasive public key infrastructure (pervasive-PKI). This choice allows the validation of credentials of users roaming between heterogeneous networks, even when global connectivity is lost and some services are temporarily unreachable. Proof-of-concept implementations and testbed validation results demonstrate that strong security can be achieved for users and applications through the combination of traditional PKI services with a number of enhancements like: (i) dynamic and collaborative trust model, (ii) use of attribute certificates for privilege management, and (iii) modular architecture enabling nomadic mobility and enhanced with reconfiguration capabilities.

Service-Oriented Security Architecture for CII based on Sensor Networks

The extraordinary growth of the information society is originating a high dependency on ICT. This provokes that those strongly interrelated technological infrastructures, as well as the information systems that underpin them, become highly critical, since their disruption would lead to high economical, material and, sometimes, human loss. As a consequence, the protection of these critical information infrastructures is becoming a major objective for governments and companies. In this paper, we give an overview of the main challenges and open research issues on critical information infrastructure security, and introduce an on-going research project that, using wireless sensor networks as an underlying technology, is dealing with those problems. Our research project focuses on the development of protection, control, evaluation, maintenance and verification mechanisms, integrated into a secure service-oriented architecture

A Practical Approach of X.509 Attribute Certificate Framework as Support to Obtain Privilege Delegation

This work introduces a particular implementation of the X.509 Attribute Certificate framework (Xac), presented in the ITU-T Recommendation. The implementation is based on the use of the Openssl library, that we have chosen for its advantages in comparison with other libraries. The paper also describes how the implementation is middleware-oriented, focusing on the delegation model specified by ITU-T proposal, and taking into consideration the ETSI report about Xac.

A New Design of Privilege Management Infrastructure for Organizations Using Outsourced PKI

Authentication services provided by Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) do not satisfy the needs of many e-commerce applications. These applications require additional use of authorization services in order for users to prove what they are allowed to do. Attribute certificates have changed the way in which the authorization problem has been considered until now, and Privilege Management Infrastructures (PMI) provide the necessary support for a wide use of those certificates. Although both types of infrastructures, PKIs and PMIs, keep some kind of relation, they can operate autonomously. This fact is specially interesting for companies who have taken or will take the decision to outsource PKI services. However, outsourcing PMI services is not a good option for many companies because sometimes information contained in attribute certificates is confidential. Therefore attribute certificates must be managed very carefully and, preferably, only inside the company. In this paper we present a new design of PMI that is specially suited for those companies that outsource PKI services but still need to manage the PMI internally. The scheme provides additional advantages that satisfy the needs of intra-company attribute certification, and eliminates some of the problems associated with the revocation procedures.

PKI design based on the use of on-line certification authorities

Public-key infrastructures (PKIs) are considered the basis of the protocols and tools needed to guarantee the security of new Internet applications like electronic commerce, government-citizen relationships and digital distribution. This paper introduces a new infrastructure design, Cert’eM, a key management and certification system that is based on the structure of the electronic mail service and on the principle of near-certification. Cert’eM provides a secure means to identify users and distribute their public-key certificates, enhances the efficiency of revocation procedures, and avoids scalability and synchronization problems. Because we have considered the revocation problem as priority in the design process and a big influence in the rest of the PKI components, we have developed an alternative solution to the use of certificate revocation lists (CRLs). This has become one of the strongest points of this new scheme.