A Formal Equivalence Classes Based Method for Security Policy Conformance Checking

Overview & Synopsis

Different security policy models have been developed and published in the past. Proven security policy models, if correctly implemented, guarantee the protection of data objects from unauthorized access or usage or prevent an illegal information flow. To verify that a security policy model has been correctly implemented, it is important to define and execute an exhaustive list of test cases, which verify that the formal security policy neither has been over-constrained nor under-constrained. In this paper we present a method for defining an exhaustive list of test cases, based on formally described equivalence classes that are derived from the formal security policy description.