Assessment of Safety Critical Systems with COTS Software and Software of Uncertain Pedigree (SOUP)

Mission- and safety critical system designers are more and more forced to use a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) approach due to more focus on cost and development times, even if COTS components normally are not specifically designed and developed for robust operation. Many safety critical systems have to be assessed or certified by independent organisations. This paper addresses the challenges assessors and certification bodies meet when facing the assessment of such systems.