A test-based security certification scheme for web services

The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm is giving rise to a new generation of applications built by dynamically composing loosely coupled autonomous services. Clients (i.e., software agents acting on behalf of human users or service providers) implementing such complex applications typically search and integrate services on the basis of their functional requirements and of their trust in the service suppliers. A major issue in this scenario relates to the definition of an assurance technique allowing clients to select services on the basis of their nonfunctional requirements and increasing their confidence that the selected services will satisfy such requirements. In this article, we first present an assurance solution that focuses on security and supports a test-based security certification scheme for Web services. The certification scheme is driven by the security properties to be certified and relies upon a formal definition of the service model. The evidence supporting a certified property is computed using a model-based testing approach that, starting from the service model, automatically generates the test cases to be used in the service certification. We also define a set of indexes and metrics that evaluate the assurance level and the quality of the certification process. Finally, we present our evaluation toolkit and experimental results obtained applying our certification solution to a financial service implementing the Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) standard.