Safety Critical Software and Security - How Low Can You Go?

Abstract

The safety of aviation software is ensured by performing development according to the DO-178C standard. However, this standard has a blind spot in that it fails to consider software security aspects in development. The Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) comprises a software security framework with 113 software security activities. This model is often used for measuring the maturity of an organization's software security lifecycle. In this paper we evaluate the ability of DO-178C to ensure also software security, by demonstrating how few BSIMM activities you can get away with performing, while remaining compliant with the different DO-178C assurance levels. The results indicate that organizations with very low software security maturity can still be able to perform well in accordance to DO-178C. Based on the results, we propose concrete activities that could be integrated into the DO-178C development process, to strengthen the security of the developed software