Modeling and Validating Role-Based Authorization Policies for a Port Communication System with UML and OCL

Modern sea or inland ports rely on digital communication and systems to boost rapid turnover of trade. Stakeholders like shippers, shipping lines, container terminals and port authorities collaborate and compete using their own legacy applications. Many sea ports operate Port Community Systems (PCS) to orchestrate processes between the players. These software systems are potential targets of security threats that may lead to payment fraud, espionage of competitors, smuggling, theft, export control violations, up to disasters involving dangerous goods possibly effecting public mains. In our approach we apply modeling to the field of information security. We combine and focus on Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with constraints and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) for finer grained authorization constraints. In a concrete case study we model authorization policies within port communities that partly utilize dedicated PCS. The purpose is to increase the integrity of exchanged data and thus reduce the risks of attacks or failures. We employ the UML-based Specification Environment (USE) and its OCL support to validate specified security properties for a typical container shipping scenario.