A prototype tool for modeling and analyzing security requirements from a holistic viewpoint

Abstract. Security breaches in large socio-technical systems cost billions. Many breaches can be attributed to the piecemeal security design, leaving parts of the system vulnerable while others are over-protected. We advo-cate holistic security design, and have introduced techniques to support security analysis across multiple layers. This paper presents MUSER, a prototype that assists security requirements analysts dealing with secu-rity requirements from a holistic viewpoint based on a three-layer frame-work. Our prototype analyzes security requirements and related security mechanisms in business layer, application layer, and physical layer. The prototype captures the influences of security mechanisms, which one layer enforces on the other layers, and supports deriving holistic security solu-tions that tackle security concerns in all layers. We demonstrate the usage of MUSER via a smart grid scenario