Modeling and verification of ATM security policies with SecBPMN

Abstract

High Performance Computing (HPC) techniques are essential in complex systems such as Socio-Technical Systems (STSs), where humans and organizations are elements of the same system along with technical infrastructures and hardware/software components. For example, several HPC approaches have been successfully applied to support and facilitate distribution or aggregation of computation power among independent and atomic components (e.g., smart meters to solve and/or simulate complex models). However, HPC techniques have to be studied and developed without underestimating the problem of security that, given the interaction-centric nature of STSs, has to be considered not only from the single component perspective but for the system as a whole. In our previous work, we have proposed SecBPMN, a framework to support the design of secure STSs. It is used to model the interaction design and security policies of a STS and it supports their verification through a querying engine. In this paper, we describe how SecBPMN has been successfully used for the study of security in an Air Traffic Management (ATM) system, and we show how it can result also an efficient support when of HPC techniques when applied in complex and heterogeneous environments.