Software Assurance and Software Safety

 

The value of Software Assurance and Software Safety on a project is:

  1. Ensuring the processes, procedures, and products used to produce and sustain the software conform to all specified requirements and standards that govern those processes, procedures and products.
    • A set of activities that assess adherence to, and the adequacy of the software processes used to develop and modify software products.
    • A set of activities that define and assess the adequacy of software processes to provide evidence that establishes confidence that the software processes are appropriate for and produce software products of suitable quality for their intended purposes. 
  2. Determining the degree of software quality obtained by the software products. 
  3. Ensuring the software systems are safe and the software safety-critical requirements are followed.
  4. Ensuring the software systems are secure.
  5. Employing rigorous analysis and testing methodologies to identify objective evidence and conclusions to provide an independent assessment of critical products and processes throughout the life cycle.
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NASA Software Assurance Program Goals

    1. Develop more efficient and automated methods for Software Assurance, Software Safety and Software Quality activities.
    2. Improve the risk, issue and finding reporting from the NASA Software Assurance and Software Safety organizations.
    3. Add value for Software Assurance and Software Safety activities and demonstrate the importance of the NASA Software Assurance activities.
    4. Provide standard tools and services for Software Assurances activities on projects.
    5. Provide measurable Software Assurance process improvement.
    6. Improve the use of data and metrics on all NASA Software Assurance activities.
    7. Focus Software Assurance activities on known software issues, including targeting Software Assurance and Software Safety research activities.
    8. Improve Software Assurance training and training requirements in the Safety and Mission Assurance Technical Excellence Program and across the agency.
 

IV&V Program

NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Program provides assurance that safety- and mission-critical systems and software will operate reliably, safely and securely. The NASA IV&V Program's primary location is the Katherine Johnson IV&V Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia. The IV&V Program provides the following services:

  • System and Software Assurance: Full life cycle IV&V and independent assessments for NASA’s highest profile missions. IV&V leads to higher quality products, reduced risk, greater insight, reduced cost and knowledge transfer.
  • Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Support: Support across the agency, in-line with the development project. Hazard Analysis, Software Assurance plan development, and standards development and evaluation.
  • Mission Protection Services: Vulnerability assessment and authorization, end-to-end full life cycle security risk assessment, FedRAMP 3PAO (cloud) services, security training, and security testing (penetration testing, code analysis and vulnerability scanning).
  • Software Development, Testing and Research: Independent testing, automation and virtualization enabled through IV&V’s Jon McBride Software Testing and Research Laboratory.
IV&V Program
 

Points of Contact

For details on contacting an IV&V Point of Contact (PoC), click below.

Find Your PoC

Policy and Guidance

SoftwareAssurance_Flowchart_Cleanup_2025_Final

NASA

NASA-STD-8739.8

NASA SOFTWARE ASSURANCE AND SOFTWARE SAFETY STANDARD

The purpose of the Software Assurance and Software Safety Standard is to define the requirements to implement a systematic approach to Software Assurance, software safety, and Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) for software created, acquired, provided, or maintained by or for NASA. The Software Assurance and Software Safety Standard provides a basis for personnel to perform software assurance, software safety, and IV&V activities consistently throughout the life of the software, that is, from its conception, through creation to operations and maintenance, and until the software is retired.

See NASA-STD-8739.8B

NASA-HDBK-2203

NASA Software Engineering Handbook

This handbook provides users and practitioners with guidance material for implementing the requirements of NPR 7150.2, NASA Software Engineering Requirements and the implementation of the NASA Software Assurance and Software Safety requirements in NASA-STD-8739.8, Software Assurance Standard. The use of this handbook is intended to provide "best-in-class" guidance for the implementation of safe and reliable software in support of NASA projects. The handbook is a key component of an agencywide plan to work toward a continuous and sustained Software Engineering and Software Assurance process and product improvement.

See NASA-HDBK-2203

Additional Guidance

Policy Title Buttons Buttons
 AC 450.141-1A  FAA Computing System Safety AC 450.141-1A Details See AC 450.141-1A
NASA-STD-8739.8 NASA Software Assurance Standard NASA-STD-8739.8 Details See NASA-STD-8739.8
NPD 7120.4 NASA Engineering and Program/Project Management Policy NPD-7120-4 Details See NPD 7120.4
NPR 7120.5 NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements NPR-7120-5 Details See NPR 7120.5
NPR 7123.1 Systems Engineering Processes and Requirements NPR-7123-1 Details See NPR 7123.1
NPR 7150.2 Software Engineering Requirements NPR-7150-2 Details See NPR 7150.2
SSP 50038 Computer-Based Control System Safety Requirements SSP 50038 Details See SSP 50038

People

Tim Crumbley

SA Technical Fellow

Learn more about SA Technical Fellow Tim Crumbley.

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Guille del Carmen

Technical Discipline Lead

Learn more about SA Technical Discipline Team Lead Guille del Carmen.

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Points of Contact

For details on contacting an SA Point of Contact (PoC), click below.

Find Your PoC

Software Assurance Working Group

The Software Assurance Working Group (SAWG) is a group of Software Assurance (SA) professionals from across NASA who work together to help formulate NASA SA policy, standards, training, guidance, briefings and other needed items. It is also a forum to share experiences, lessons learned and useful techniques. The SAWG provides a community that can provide assistance and support to individual practitioners.