Trusting Computers Through Trusting Humans: Software Verification in a Safety-Critical Information Society

View Sample PDF

Author(s): Alison Adam (University of Salford, UK)
Copyright: 2009
Pages: 15
Source title: Social and Human Elements of Information Security: Emerging Trends and Countermeasures
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Manish Gupta (State University of New York, USA)and Raj Sharman (State University of New York, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-036-3.ch005

Keywords: Information Science Reference / Information Security & Privacy / IT Security and Ethics / Security & Forensics

Purchase

View Trusting Computers Through Trusting Humans: Software Verification in a Safety-Critical Information Society on the publisher's website for pricing and purchasing information.

Abstract

This chapter considers the question of how we may trust automatically generated program code. The code walkthroughs and inspections of software engineering mimic the ways that mathematicians go about assuring themselves that a mathematical proof is true. Mathematicians have difficulty accepting a computer generated proof because they cannot go through the social processes of trusting its construction. Similarly, those involved in accepting a proof of a computer system or computer generated code cannot go through their traditional processes of trust. The process of software verification is bound up in software quality assurance procedures, which are themselves subject to commercial pressures. Quality standards, including military standards, have procedures for human trust designed into them. An action research case study of an avionics system within a military aircraft company illustrates these points, where the software quality assurance (SQA) procedures were incommensurable with the use of automatically generated code.

The IRMA Community

Research IRM

Trusting Computers Through Trusting Humans: Software Verification in a Safety-Critical Information Society

Purchase

Abstract

Related Content

IRMA Sponsors