Certifying Software for High-Assurance Environments

Software certi cation processes have become so intertwined with development processes that true product certi cation which should demonstrate that the software will behave appro priately is almost never employed This de ciency calls for a new generation of certi cation processes This paper presents a methodology for certifying software systems that will be em ployed in environments with high assurance requirements Our methodology is independent of how the software was developed Until software certi cation becomes a software centered activity as opposed to a process centered activity e g CMM TCSEC Common Critieria etc labeling software as highly reliable high assurance high integrity safe se cure etc is suspicious