Continuous safety & security evidence generation, curation and assurance case construction using the Evidential Tool Bus

abstract

Establishing assurance of software is indispensable in safety-critical systems. Constructing an assurance case for safety & security of software subsumes the entire development and V&V workflow involving the use of multitude of (formal) analysis tools to develop claims supported by diverse sets of evidence. This evidence needs to be curated for certification and assurance case construction. Further, the complexity of information flows gets compounded due to changing needs & goals over the course of certification. We demonstrate the application of the Evidential Tool Bus (ETB2), on an industrial use case workflow involving several tools and methodologies, to support continuous Evidence Generation, their Curation & Assurance Case Construction, from major industrial collaborators in Aviation. Evidence Generation follows the Design for Certification (DesCert) methodology. Curation uses the Rapid Assurance Curation Kit (RACK) for semantic reification of evidential data. Assurance case tools using, then use the curated evidence from RACK for assurance case construction.