A flexible architecture for systematic implementation of SoC security policies

Modern SoC designs contain a large number of sensitive assets that must be protected from unauthorized access. Authentication mechanisms which control the access to such assets are governed by complex security policies. The security policies affect multiple design blocks and may involve subtle interactions among hardware, firmware, OS kernel, and applications. The implementation of security policies in an SoC design, often referred to as its security architecture, is a subtle composition of coordinating design modules distributed across the different IPs. Toward this direction, this paper gives an overview of SoC security architectures in modern SoC designs and provides a glimpse of their implementation, as well as their design complexities and functional shortcomings. Design of security architectures involves a complex interplay of requirements from functionality, power, security, and validation. We also outline some of the research needs in the area for developing robust, trustworthy SoC designs.

Verification of security policies represents one of the most critical, complex, and expensive steps of modern SoC design validation. SoC security policies are typically implemented as part of functional design flow, with a diverse set of protection mechanisms sprinkled across various IP blocks. An obvious upshot is that their verification requires comprehension and analysis of the entire system, representing a scalability bottleneck for verification tools. The scale and complexity of industrial SoC is far beyond the analysis capacity of state-of-the-art formal tools; even simulation-based security verification is severely limited in effectiveness because of the need to exercise subtle corner-cases across the entire system. We address this challenge by developing a novel security architecture that accounts for verification needs from the ground up. Our framework, ArtiFact, provides an alternative architecture for security policy implementation that exploits a flexible, centralized, infrastructure IP and enables scalable, streamlined verification of these policies. With our architecture, verification of system-level security policies reduces to analysis of this single IP and its interfaces, enabling off-the-shelf formal tools to successfully verify these policies. We introduce a CAD flow that supports both formal and dynamic (simulation-based) verification, and is built on top of such off-the-shelf tools. Our approach reduces verification time by over 62X and bug detection time by 34X for illustrative policies.

Security policies by design in NoSQL document databases

Despite their importance to the implementation of security and defence policy, less dramatic and more incremental events remain relatively overlooked in the study of security policymaking. Framing these as mid-range instances of security policymaking and applying a norm-dynamics framework, this article addresses that gap. It aims to elucidate how strategic culture, institutionalized norms, and discursive strategies interact to shape this layer of policymaking, drawing on an analysis of the Swedish parliament’s ratification of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme in 1994 and the Host Nation Support agreement in 2016. The study shows how underlying mechanics in norm dynamics continue to be instrumental for policy transformation in the absence of crisis and war. The findings suggest that institutional inertia rooted in enduring norms acts as a brake on more radical security policy shifts, even when a nation’s security landscape is in flux. The study offers insights relevant for the analysis of the subtler norm dynamics in other parliamentary democracies facing similar mid-range security policy questions. Studying these more modest, incremental forms of policymaking is valuable in a context of shifting power alliances and normative uncertainty in global politics.

This paper described a modeling method for consistency checking of IP blocks used in design of a mixed-signal SoC (MS SoC). The consistency includes four points in the MS SoC design to guarantee the IP blocks suitable for applications. The four points are architecture matching, parameter matching, time matching, and frequency matching. Based on the signal flow graph (SFG), the MS SoC constructed by different IP blocks can be a signal processing system including analog part and digital part. After adding two new definitions on an edge function, which is used for the description of the parameter consistency, a set of nodes and edges function becomes the base of the checking model. The checking model can describe the consistency of the architecture and the parameter including time and frequency matching

Trust represents a fundamental pillar of contemporary security policy, influencing decision-making processes, institutional stability, and the effectiveness of security measures at both national and international levels. This article explores trust as a key precondition for the formulation and implementation of security policy, emphasizing its role in relations between states, within security institutions, and between public authorities and society. The analysis focuses on trust as a multidimensional concept encompassing political legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and the credibility of security actors. Particular attention is paid to the consequences of declining trust, including increased social polarization, weakened resilience of democratic systems, and reduced effectiveness of collective security arrangements. The article argues that building and maintaining trust is not merely a normative objective, but a strategic necessity for ensuring long-term security and stability in an increasingly complex and uncertain security environment.Through comparative analysis of selected European states (Finland, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, France, and Estonia), the paper identifies critical determinants of trust, including transparency, institutional neutrality, crisis communication, and historical path-dependence. The findings demonstrate that trust acts as both an input to and an output of security policy, reinforcing legitimacy through reciprocity between citizens and the state.The article concludes that sustained trust-building must be recognized as a strategic dimension of security governance. Trust-based security strengthens societal resilience, mitigates polarization, and enhances adaptive capacity in hybrid threat environments.

A SOC integration platform provides a multi-application system backbone for various application families. With minor effort, multiple designs in the same domain can be reached by reusing IP cores. However, there are several steps in SOC conception that can cause the design to fail. In addition of platforms, SOC designers need methodologies and formal models for success. One of the most important problems is the IP core integration. Successful integration of IP/VC blocks indeed requires a set of views that provides the ad hoc information for each IP block through the SOC design flow. This paper describes some key points of our IP integration methodology that exploits both IP designer and SOC integrator constraints. As an illustration, we present an example of a quantizer core reused from an MPEG design into a JPEG2000 encoder both implemented on the same SOC platform.

Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is more and more applied to design and implement security policies in large networking systems. Although the elegance of this model, the design process of a security policy remains a challenge. The consistence and the correctness of the policy are crucial. Formal verification is one of the techniques, which can be used to prove that the designed policy is consistent. In this paper, we present a concrete formal modeling/analysis approach for RBAC policies. The modeling phase uses Colored Petri Nets (CPN) and the generated models will be analyzed using the CPN-tool. This analysis will wallow to prove many important proprieties about the RBAC security policy.

Despite increasing investment in information security and its strategic role in today’s business success, effective implementation of information security strategies still remains one of the top challenges facing global organizations. This study investigated Information Security Policy compliance of staff members of a municipality in South Africa. Factors such as information security policy, security policy strategic planning, policy implementation and compliance were considered. A questionnaire was distributed to 80 staff members from different sections in this municipality and a response rate of 100% was achieved. The study findings showed that the majority of employees are largely in support of the municipality’s efforts to develop and implement a security policy framework. They also concur that compliance to security policy safeguards and prevents intrusion information, theft and "denial of service". Among other issues, it is recommended that more training and awareness campaigns should be done to all employees in order to improve security of information in this municipality. The study results can be limited by the small number of the population as indicated that the sample was equal to the population (N=n).

The secure interaction between different applications and services requires negotiation of their security properties. This is typically defined as a security policy contract, which aims at coordinating diverse security policies of different actors. Although considerable attention has been attracted to this theme in the recent literature of e-contract and negotiation, there is not a complete framework to negotiate security policies. In this paper, we propose a framework and an algorithm to negotiate security policy. The paper shows mainly how an agreement could be reached between two negotiators with our negotiation model. Besides, it advances an approach to evaluate the relationship between security policies.

Security policy is a main mechanism of information security management. While there are a lot of security-related standards and guidelines which specify requirements for high-level security policies, implementation of network security policy still depends on interfaces provided by network security systems (NSS). Obviously, diversity of policy representation languages affects efficiency of policy deployment process. The paper proposes a concept of unification of policy rules for NSSs as a solution for the problem. The idea is based on a formal language which makes it possible to formalize network security policies independently of particular NSSs.

Managing Security Clearances within Government Institutions

Continued high profile security breaches indicate that Information Systems Security remains a significant problem within organizations. The authors argue that one of the major contributors to this ongoing problem is a disconnect between security policy formulation and implementation. This disconnect can lead to a failure of policy. This paper is aimed at understanding the disconnect by analyzing the meanings that are attributed to policy formulation and implementation by the stakeholders involved in the process. A case study was carried out and a “snapshot in time” of the lifecycle of IS Security Policy formulation at the organization under study demonstrated that a disconnect is evident between these two sides of security policy.

Information has become organizations’ most valuable asset, thus being a potential target to threats intending to explore their vulnerabilities and cause considerable damage. Therefore, there is a need to implement policies regarding information systems security (ISS) in an attempt to reduce the chances of fraud or information loss. Thus, it is important to find the critical success factors to the implementation of a security policy as well as to assess the level of importance of each one of them. This paper contributes to the identification of such factors by presenting the results of a survey regarding information systems security policies in small and medium sized enterprises (SME). We discuss the results in the light of a literature framework and identify future works aiming to enhance information security in organizations.

The theoretical foundations of the national security strategy are substantiated to establish the need to introduce into the educational process the professional training of future specialists - the definitions of «strategy», «strategic planning and forecasting» of national security. The concept of «strategy» by categories of philosophical-fundamental vision and technological-semantic representation of perspective management of future development of future forecasting and planning scenarios under the guidance of specialists with professional security competencies is considered as a process of regulated sequence of planning strategies to ensure effective security policy goals. Aspects of strategic forecasting are singled out - prediction, screening of information data of system analysis of the state and perspective development with assessment of risks and dangers in the field of national security. The definition of «strategic planning» as a function of national security management in the implementation of security policy provides for the definition of strategic goals, objectives and objectives in the system of public administration measures to protect national sovereignty.Key words: strategy, strategic planning, strategic forecasting, national security, professional training, future professionals.