Software Security, Privacy, and Dependability: Metrics and Measurement

Measurement of software security is an ongoing research field. Privacy is also becoming an imperative target as social networking and ubiquitous computing evolve and users exchange high volumes of personal information. However, security and privacy alone don't guarantee proper data protection; software must also be dependable. Several standards typify the main concepts and protection mechanisms for these three properties, and measurement methodologies can quantify the provided protection level. However, security, privacy, and dependability are usually dealt with in isolation. To solve this problem, researchers have proposed a practical, easy-to-use methodology that measures a software system's overall security, privacy, and dependability (SPD) on the basis of the standards for each property. The nSHIELD (New Embedded Systems Architecture for Multi-layer Dependable Solutions) project is applying the SPD methodology to evaluate configurable embedded software in a social-mobility scenario.