ADV_SPM - Formal security policy models in practice

Abstract

The paper examines the ADV_SPM "Security policy modelling" assurance family, which is part of the ADV "Development" assurance class and defined by the ISO/IEC 15408-3-2013 "Information technology - Security techniques - Evaluation criteria for IT security - Part 3: Security assurance components" standard. We discuss the objective set by this family, which is to provide additional assurance from the development of a formal security policy model of the target of evaluation security functionality and establishing a correspondence between the functional specification and this security policy model by means of a mathematical proof. We propose an approach to the formalization and verification of security policies using the Event-B modelling notation and the Rodin platform, whose rigour is used to obtain the desired security properties by means of formal machine-checkable proofs. The approach helps to identify and eliminate ambiguous, inconsistent, contradictory, or unenforceable security policy elements. We illustrate this approach with a simplified example of a FRU_PRS "Priority of service" model (defined in the second part of the standard) in which we provide a formal proof that the model contains no inconsistencies, and that an insecure state cannot be reached. We conclude that the approach is applicable for solving practical problems and it can be used to fulfil the requirements of the ADV_SPM assurance family.