Assumption-Driven Design A Strategy for Critical Thinking in Trusted Systems Design

More than ever, information system designers must provide security protection against a wide variety of threats. While numerous sources of guidance are available to inform the design process, system architects often improvise their own design methods. This paper aims to distil the experience gained by NSA trusted system analysts over decades so that it that can be practically applied by others. The general approach is to identify and reduce the number of assumptions on which the security of the system depends. Simply making these assumptions explicit and showing their interdependence has significant, albeit difficult to quantify, benefits for system security. Our hope is that this design methodology will serve as the starting point for the development of a more formal and robust engineering methodology for trusted system design. Keywords—Secure System Design, Assumption Analysis, Refinement Goal, Trust, Trusted System, Privacy, Design Methodology