A software development framework for secure microservices

Abstract: The software development community has seen the proliferation of a new style of building applications based on small and specialized autonomous units of computation logic called microservices. Microservices collaborate by sending light-weight messages to automate a business task. These microservices are independently deployable with arbitrary schedules, allowing enterprises to quickly create new sets of business capabilities in response to changing business requirements. It is expected that the use of microservices will become the default style of building software applications by the year 2023, with the microservices’ market projected to reach thirtytwo billion United States of American dollars. The adoption of microservices presents new security challenges due to the way the units of computation logic are designed, deployed and maintained. The decomposition of an application into small independent units increases the attack surface, and makes it a challenge to secure and control network traffic for each unit. These new security challenges cannot be addressed by traditional security strategies. Software engineers developing microservices are facing growing pressure to build secure microservices to ensure the security of business information assets and guarantee business continuity. The research conducted in this thesis proposes a software development framework that software engineers can use to build secure microservices. The framework defines artefacts, development and maintenance activities together with methods and techniques that software engineers can use to ensure that microservices are developed from the ground up to be secure. The goal of the framework is to ensure that microservices are designed and built to be able to detect, react, respond and recover from attacks during day-to-day operations. To prove the capability of the framework, a microservices-based application is developed using the proposed software development framework as part of an experiment to determine its effectiveness. These results, together with a comparative and quality review of the framework indicate that the software development framework can be effectively used to develop secure microservices.Ph.D. (Computer Science