The Software Challenge: Balancing Costs and Security RisksJanuary 16, 2009
The Aegis Combat System after nearly 30 years remains the standard in advanced command-and-control weapon systems using computers to destroy targets. The programming used in the system seems old fashioned by today’s standards, using just a fraction of the code that the latest systems would require. But now that software plays such a pivotal role in American weapons systems, no one group is capable of maintaining it all – not the Pentagon, defense contractors nor systems integrators. The costs associated with this work are also increasing the price tag for these modern systems. This raises several prickly security issues. With so many lines of custom code, commercial off-the-shelf code, special code written by government programmers and open-source programming, how do you verify that errors—accidental or malignant—are not introduced by overseas developers? Read more about safeguarding the rapid growth in the use of code from the Wharton Aerospace and Defense Report. Download our latest whitepaper, The Software Challenge: Balancing Costs and Security Risks. |
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