bpmn-to-cacao

README

bpmn-to-cacao

About

BPMN-to-CACAO is a utility to convert BPMN XML workflows into OASIS CACAO JSON playbooks. BPMN-to-CACAO supports CACAO specification v1.1 and has limited support for v2.0.

Compilation

BPMN-to-CACAO requires go1.18 at a minimum. To build the bpmn-to-cacao executable:

make build

To run tests:

make test

Usage

Using https://github.com/cisagov/shareable-soar-workflows as input:

find ./shareable-soar-workflows -name \*.bpmn -exec bpmn-to-cacao --output-dir=out {} \;

Limitations

This utility is intended to create CACAO playbooks as a starting point. The conversion from BPMN to CACAO is not perfect, as BPMN is a general purpose notation to specify buiness processes, while CACAO is directly applicable to cybersecurity. Additionally, BPMN uses "gateways" as an abstraction to support non-linear constructs, while CACAO uses if/while/switch branch statements that are more aligned with procedural programming languages, and BPMN gateways do not always map to if/while/switch statements in a consistent way. The other limitation is that BPMN workflows may have multiple entry points, implemented either as an explicit "start" action, or using event driven logic (intermediate catch event), while CACAO assumes exactly one start step.