Software Trustworthiness: Past, Present and Future

Software controls an increasing number of complex technical systems, ranging from Internet-based e-health and e-government applications to embedded control systems in factories, cars, and aircrafts. Even though the quality assurance budgets of software makers are increasing, program failures happen quite often. The successful deployment of software systems depends on the extent to which we can justifiably trust them. Academia, government, and industry have conducted several efforts with the aim of providing a view of trustworthiness in software from system construction, evaluation and analysis. This paper investigates the previous and present activities that have been performed to achieve software trustworthiness and suggests some guidelines for future activities. The proposed approach uses the novel behaviouristic model for verifying software trustworthiness based on scenarios of interactions between the software and its users and environment [1].