Integrating functional and security requirements with use case decomposition

Abstract

Misuse case modeling is a viable option to depict the security requirements together with functional requirements. To investigate the interplay between functional and security requirements, this paper presents an approach to decomposing use cases, misuse cases, and mitigation use cases. We identify relationships among decomposed cases for each case type (use, misuse, mitigation use) and ensure consistency among the cases as decomposition occurs by properly modeling shared and optional cases. We also assign applicable actors to the decomposed cases. Decomposition is conducted for each case type independently and then integrated with the threatens and mitigates relationships. We provide processes for the proper use of the threatens relationship between misuse cases and use cases and the mitigates relationship between mitigation use cases and misuse cases at different levels of abstraction. Thus, a complete set of security-centric requirements can be specified from the project outset to guide subsequent software development phases.