Cerberus: Automated synthesis of enforcement mechanisms for security-sensitive business processes

Abstract

Cerberus is a tool to automatically synthesize run-time enforcement mechanisms for security-sensitive Business Processes (BPs). The tool is capable of guaranteeing that the execution constraints EC on the tasks together with the authorization policy AP and the authorization constraints AC are satisfied while ensuring that the process can successfully terminate. Cerberus can be easily integrated in many workflow management systems, it is transparent to process designers, and does not require any knowledge beyond usual BP modeling. The tool works in two phases. At design-time, the enforcement mechanism M, parametric in the authorization policy AP, is generated from EC and AC; M can thus be used with any instance of the same BP provided that EC and AC are left unchanged. At run-time, a specific authorization policy is added to M, thereby obtaining an enforcement mechanism M ∗ dedicated to a particular instance of the security-sensitive business process. To validate our approach, we discuss the implementation and usage of Cerberus in the SAP HANA Operational Intelligence platform.