COLLABORATIVE SECURITY ASSESSMENTS IN EMBEDDED SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT - The ESSAF Framework for Structured Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

The standardization of network protocols and software components in embedded systems development has introduced security threats that have been common before in e-commerce and office systems into the domain of critical infrastructures. The ESSAF framework presented in this paper lays the ground for collaborative, structured security assessments during the design and development phase of these systems. Its three phases system modeling, security modeling and mitigation planning guide software developers in the independent assessment of their product's security, minimizing the burden on security experts in the collection of security relevant data.