Verifying Implementation of Security Design Patterns Using a Test Template

Although security patterns contain security expert knowledge to support software developers, these patterns may be inappropriately applied because most developers are not security specialists, leading to threats and vulnerabilities. Here we propose a validation method for security design patterns in the implementation phase of software development. Our method creates a test template from a security design pattern, which consists of the "aspect test template" to observe the internal processing and the "test case template". Providing design information creates a test from the test template. Because a test template is recyclable, it can create easily a test, which can validate the security design patterns. As a case study, we applied our method to a web system. The result shows that our method can test repetition in the early stage of implementation, verify pattern applications, and assess whether vulnerabilities are resolved.