DPS: An Architectural Style for Development of Secure Software

Many claim that software systems must be designed for security. This, however, is far from being an easy task, especially for complex systems. We believe that this difficulty can be alleviated by a set of —preferably rigorous— principles. We propose an architectural style, the Dual Protection Style (DPS), for constructing secure software. This style results from our experience in designing and implementing a distributed, multi-user, medium sized application. We present the applicability and effectiveness of our DPS style on the basis of a case study of a distributed software platform for virtual and mobile team collaboration called Motion. We further elaborate on the description of this architectural style, its formalization and the formal verification of some of its properties.