Cyber Security Requirements Engineering

Abstract

Virtually every connected system will be attacked sooner or later. This holds specifically for cloud-based services and systems. A 100% secure solution is not feasible. Therefore, advanced risk assessment and mitigation is the order of the day. Risk-oriented security engineering helps in both designing for robust systems as well as effective mitigation upon attacks or exploits of vulnerabilities. Security must be integrated early in the design phase to understand the threats and risks to expected functionality. The security analysis provides requirements and respective test vectors so that adequate measures can be derived for balancing security costs and efforts. This book chapter provides experience and guidance concerning how information security can be successfully achieved with a security requirements engineering perspective. Our experiences from embedded security in critical IT systems show that security is only successful with a systematic understanding and handling of security requirements and their interaction with functional requirements. Four requirements engineering-related levers for achieving security are addressed: security requirements elicitation, security analysis, security design, and security validation. We will show for each of these levers how security is analyzed and implemented. A case study from automotive systems will highlight concrete best practices. Only systematic and disciplined security requirements engineering will ensure that security needs are met end to end from concept to architecture to verification and test and—most relevant—operations, service, and maintenance.