OpenPMF: A Model-Driven Security Framework for Distributed Systems

Abstract

The wide-spread use of different distributed systems platforms and security technologies today makes the integration of distributed applications and the migration of existing applications to new technologies increasingly difficult. Model driven software development approaches try to tackle this problem by first modelling the application logic independent of technologies, and then by mapping this model to the technology. Security in distributed systems faces a similar problem because there are many different platforms and security technologies that need to be integrated. This paper illustrates how the concepts of model driven software engineering can be applied to security, and we present OpenPMF, our flexible, model-driven security framework in which a technology-independent abstract representation of the security policy is stored in a technology-independent policy repository, which is integrated with the underlying platform and security technology in a well-defined and flexible manner. Our architecture takes into account the separation of functional and non-functional properties of distributed applications. We also discuss the integration of our system with CORBA and CORBA Components.