Software certification in practice: how are standards being applied?

Certification schemes exist to regulate software systems and prevent them from being deployed before they are judged fit to use. However, practitioners are often unsatisfied with the efficiency of certification standards and processes. In this study, we analyzed two certification standards, Common Criteria and DO-178C, and collected insights from literature and from interviews with subject-matter experts to identify concepts affecting the efficiency of certification processes. Our results show that evaluation time, reusability of evaluation artifacts, and composition of systems and certified artifacts are barriers to achieve efficient certification.