Software Safety: Here's What You Need to Know in 2023

Software safety is ultimately about preventing a system from reaching dangerous states.

In software, the principle clearinghouse of state change is memory. So the first line of defense preventing a program from reaching a dangerous state is controlling?what?can access its memory and?how?that memory can be accessed.

Software safety as predictability is another important aspect. Experts in this field contend that enhanced software safety has a lot to do with attitude. Software engineers have historically been bad at safety because software engineers are not used to the idea that software can injure.

Yet, besides the potential for injury, the total cost of poor software quality in the U.S. is estimated at $2.08 trillion.

Many feel the most effective way to enforce software safety and security is to use a static code analysis tool. In fact, MISRA recommends that you use a static code analysis tool to ensure the highest degree of compliance.

By using a static code analysis tool, you’re able to identify software safety and security vulnerabilities, errors and bugs. This enables you to fix these potential weaknesses before they become dangerous and damaging.

It’s generally agreed that to achieve an acceptable level of safety for software used in critical applications, software system safety engineering must be given primary emphasis early in the requirements definition and system conceptual design process.

The next step is for safety-critical software receive continuous management emphasis and engineering analysis throughout the?development and operational lifecycles?of the system.

Additionally, software with safety-critical functionality must be thoroughly verified with objective analysis.

Functional Hazard Analyses (FHA) are often conducted early on - in parallel with or as part of system engineering Functional Analyses - to determine the safety-critical functions (SCF) of the systems for further analyses and verification.

Want to learn more? Tonex offers Software Safety Training, a 3-day course that covers all aspects of Software Safety focusing on philosophies and methods in software safety and its primary objectives.

Additionally, Tonex offers several more courses in Software Safety including:

--Software Safety Course for Managers (2 days)

--Software Safety Programming and Software Coding Standards (2 days)

--Software Safety Training Workshop (2 days)

--Software Safety, Hazards Analysis and Risk Management Training Workshop (3 days)

--Software System Safety Engineering Training (3 days)

For more information, questions, comments, contact us.