Design notations for secure software: a systematic literature review

• Published in: Software and systems modeling Vol. 16; no. 3; pp. 809 - 831
• Main Authors: van den Berghe, Alexander, Scandariato, Riccardo, Yskout, Koen, Joosen, Wouter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-07-2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Communities; Compilers; Computer Science; Datavetenskap (datalogi); Design analysis; Empirical study; Fragmentation; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Interpreters; IT in Business; Literature reviews; Notation; Programming Languages; Programming Techniques; Regular Paper; Security; Software design; Software Engineering; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Software design; Security; Notation; Empirical study
• ISSN: 1619-1366; 1619-1374; 1619-1374
• DOI: 10.1007/s10270-015-0486-9

In the past 10 years, the research community has produced a significant number of design notations to represent security properties and concepts in a design artifact. These notations are aimed at documenting and analyzing security in a software design model. The fragmentation of the research space, however, has resulted in a complex tangle of different techniques. Hence, practitioners are confronted with the challenging task of scouting the right approach from a multitude of proposals. Similarly, it is hard for researchers to keep track of the synergies among the existing notations, in order to identify the existing opportunities for original contributions. This paper presents a systematic literature review that inventorizes the existing notations and provides an in-depth, comparative analysis for each.