Security from Design, Bridging Model-Driven Architecture and DevSecOps Using Zynerator

We propose an extension to Zynerator, a Model-Driven Architecture framework for automated microservice generation, that embeds DevSecOps principles directly at the modeling stage through semantic decorators. These decorators enable the automated synthesis of secure back-end and front-end components together with operational artifacts, including authentication and authorization modules, audit trails, monitoring dashboards, and DevSecOps pipelines covering SAST, DAST, testing, and deployment. The approach addresses a key limitation of the original Zynerator framework, namely the absence of explicit DevSecOps integration, and supports a security-by-design methodology that reduces reliance on specialized DevSecOps expertise. Through a detailed e-commerce case study and empirical evaluation against manual development and existing Model-Driven Architecture tools, we show that the enhanced framework reduces development effort, strengthens security posture, and accelerates DevSecOps adoption. These findings indicate that DevSecOps-aware model-driven engineering offers a viable pathway toward secure, auto-mated software delivery.

@article{Zouani2026,
  title     = {Security from Design, Bridging Model-Driven Architecture and DevSecOps Using Zynerator},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {17},
  number    = {6},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Younes Zouani and Mohamed Lachgar and Youssef Harrati and Mohamed Hanine and Sulieman S. Alshuhri and Amal Alomran},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2026.0170685},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2026.0170685}
}