Modeling security as a dependability attribute: A refinement-based approach

As distributed, networked computing systems become the dominant computing platform in a growing range of applications, they increase opportunities for security violations by opening hitherto unknown vulnerabilities. Also, as systems take on more critical functions, they increase the stakes of security by acting as custodians of assets that have great economic or social value. Finally, as perpetrators grow increasingly sophisticated, they increase the threats on system security. Combined, these premises place system security at the forefront of engineering concerns. In this paper, we introduce and discuss a refinement-based model for one dimension of system security, namely survivability.