Security service adaptation for embedded service systems in changing environments

Distributed embedded applications increasingly operate in changing environments where the application security depends on the type and properties of the currently used communication services and employed devices. While vulnerabilities, threats, and available security function processing power are changing, the applications, however, should automatically adapt to the varying conditions in order to maintain the necessary security without endeavor of users. We report on the security management subproject of the SIRENA project where we apply a special combination of policy-based management with model-based management in order to support fully automated security management functions at runtime as well as tool-assisted security requirement definition and system design. Within an application model, the definition of the application's high-level security policy is of special importance. It represents the abstract security requirements and forms the starting point for the automated derivation of suitable security subsystem configurations which enforce the policy under changing environment conditions. The abstract policy representation relies on the generalized role based access control model (GRBAC)