Supporting Security Sensitive Architecture Design

Security is an important quality attribute required in many software intensive systems. However, software development methodologies do not provide sufficient support to address security related issues. Furthermore, the majority of the software designers do not have adequate expertise in the security domain. Thus, security is often treated as an add-on to the designed architecture. Such ad-hoc practices to deal with security issues can result in a system that is vulnerable to different types of attacks. The security community has discovered several security sensitive design patterns, which can be used to compose a security sensitive architecture. However, there is little awareness about the relationship between security and software architecture. Our research has identified several security patterns along with the properties that can be achieved through those patterns. This paper presents those patterns and properties in a framework that can provide appropriate support to address security related issues during architecture processes.