A pragmatic approach to capturing safety and security relevant information for reusable european component oriented architecture software components

The European Component Oriented Architecture, (ECOA), concept provides a framework for portability and interoperability of Application Software Components, (ASC), through use of an interfacing layer, which permits a standardised but abstractly specified component interface to be mapped through to a range of different computing platforms. This flexibility is expected to revolutionise how the military avionics industry procures and develops software systems, including reducing costs and timescales to deployment of new and enhanced systems. These benefits are only realised if an equally flexible approach can be taken for safety certification and security accreditation. Unfortunately, the standards, regulators and approaches required in each of the nation states are not the same, hence it has been necessary to search for shared objectives wherever possible, but also allow points of variation where necessary. The approach proposed is pragmatic and simple but leaves scope for more rigour to be applied where appropriate, for example, for higher assurance systems. Although the ECOA concepts were developed with the military avionic sector in mind, the concepts and the approach to recording safety and security information may also be useful in other domains. The ECOA concept is currently under development by: Dassault Aviation, BAE Systems, AgustaWestland, Bull, General Dynamics, GE Aviation, Selex and Thales, funded jointly by UK and French governments.