Predicting Software Assurance Using Quality and Reliability Measures

Abstract

Security vulnerabilities are defects that enable an external party to compromise a system. Our research indicates that improving software quality by reducing the number of errors also reduces the number of vulnerabilities and hence improves software security. Some portion of security vulnerabilities (maybe over half of them) are also quality defects. This report includes security analysis based on data the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has collected over many years for 100 software development projects. Can quality defect models that predict quality results be applied to security to predict security results? Simple defect models focus on an enumeration of development errors after they have occurred and do not relate directly to operational security vulnerabilities, except when the cause is quality related. This report discusses how a combination of software development and quality techniques can improve software security.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA617961

Entities

People

  • Carol C. Woody
  • Robert J. Ellison
  • William R. Nichols

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Cyber
  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agile Software Development
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Cybersecurity
  • Debugging
  • Engineering
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Operating Systems
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Software Assurance
  • Software Development
  • Software Metrics
  • Software Testing
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Vulnerability

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Software Engineering.