DesCert: Design for Certification

Abstract: The goal of the DARPA Automated Rapid Certification Of Software (ARCOS) program is to "automate the evaluation of software assurance evidence to enable certifiers to determine rapidly that system risk is acceptable." As part of this program, the DesCert project focuses on the assurance-driven development of new software. The DesCert team consists of SRI International, Honeywell Research, and the University of Washington. We have adopted a formal, tool-based approach to the construction of software artifacts that are supported by rigorous evidence. The DesCert workflow integrates evidence generation into a design process that goes from requirements capture and analysis to the decomposition of the high-level software requirements into architecture properties and software components with assertional contracts, and on to software that can be analyzed both dynamically and statically. The generated evidence is organized by means of an assurance ontology and integrated into the RACK knowledge base.