Formal Analysis of Workflow Systems with Security Considerations

Security considerations, such as role-based access control (RBAC) mechanism and separation of duty (SoD) constraints, are important and integral to workflow systems. We propose the use of an equation-based method – the OTS/CafeOBJ method to specify workflow systems with such security considerations, and verify some desired safety and liveness properties of workflow systems. Specifically, a workflow system, together with its security considerations, is modeled as an OTS, a kind of transition system. Then the OTS is written in CafeOBJ, an algebraic specification language. We express safety and liveness properties in CafeOBJ and verify that the OTS satisfies these properties by writing proof scores in CafeOBJ. We use a case study – formal analysis of a workflow system that deals with travel expense reimbursement, to demonstrate our method of modeling, specifying and verifying.