In many practical contexts, it is necessary to certify that the content of a web server log file is correct with respect to real client traffic. This certification should be carried out by an independent third party, which we will call a certification agency, that is trusted by the web server owner and by the log file user. The certification agency should use adequate technology to perform the ...

Although there is increasing use of eco-labeling, conditions under which eco-labels can command price premiums are not fully understood. In this article, we demonstrate that the certification of environmental practices by a third party should be analyzed as a strategy distinct from—although related to—the disclosure of the eco-certification through a label posted on the product. By assessing ec...

Traditional, standards-based approaches to certification are hugely expensive, of questionable credibility when development is outsourced, and a barrier to innovation. This paper is a call and a manifesto for new approaches to certification. We start by advocating a goal-based approach in which unconditional claims delivered by formal methods are combined with other evidence in multi-legged cas...

Previous studies in software certification provide a set of axiom and supporting models for software assessment and certification. Two main researches were undertaken to study the issue of certification and developed models of software certification. These models have been developed using requirements-design-implementation strategy to ensure that it meets the needs of a number of different inte...

The industrialization of software development induces several changes to the development process as software development becomes distributed over company borders. They cooperatively develop individual components that are later assembled to software systems. This division of responsibilities requires a stricter quality assurance and in fact, creates a setting where the certification of software ...

A technique for elegantly expressing In-lined Reference Monitor (IRM) certification as model-checking is presented and implemented. In-lined Reference Monitors (IRM’s) enforce software security policies by in-lining dynamic security guards into untrusted binary code. Certifying IRM systems provide strong formal guarantees for such systems by verifying that the instrumented code produced by the ...

OBJECTIVES To better understand the relationship between board certification and credentialing policies for surgeons and nonsurgical subspecialists and to examine possible variation in use of board certification among different types of hospitals. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Telephone survey conducted from November 14, 2006, through March 16, 2007, of the privileging personnel among a r...

In this paper, we explore the drivers of certification with the ISO 14001 environmental management standard. Scholars and practitioners debate whether ISO 14001 certification signals superior underlying environmental performance or signifies merely the adoption of specific environmental management practices. Our paper helps to resolve this debate by developing a theory of why and when organizat...

Tilapia, a tropical freshwater fish native to Africa, is an increasingly important global food commodity. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a major environmental nongovernmental organization, has established stakeholder dialogues to formulate farm certification standards that promote "responsible" culture practices. As a preface to its "tilapia aquaculture dialogue," the WWF for Nature comm...

Software often must be certified for safety, security, or other critical properties. Traditional approaches to certification require the software, its systems context, and all their associated assurance artifacts to be available for scrutiny in their final, completed forms. But modern development practices often postpone the determination of final system configuration from design time to integr...