Investigating Advances in the Acquisition of Secure Systems Based on Open Architecture, Open Source Software, and Software Product Lines

Abstract

The role of software acquisition ecosystems in the development and evolution of secure open architecture systems has received insufficient consideration. Such systems are composed of software components subject to different security requirements in an architecture in which evolution can occur by evolving existing components or by replacing them. However, this may result in possible security requirements conflicts and organizational liability for failure to fulfill security obligations. We have developed an approach for understanding and modeling software security requirements as security licenses for analyzing conflicts among groups of such licenses in realistic system contexts, and for guiding the acquisition, integration, or development of systems with open source components in such an environment. Consequently, this paper reports on our efforts to extend our existing approach to specifying and analyzing software intellectual property licenses to now address software security licenses that can be associated with secure OA systems.