Industry support groups that foster secure/quality coding practices

["Kenneth R. van Wyk" <Ken () KRvW com>]

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Hi all,

A friend of mine recently pointed me to an industry group over in the UK whose 
charter is "To provide assistance to the automotive industry in the 
application and creation within vehicle systems of safe and reliable 
software."  The group is known as the Motor Industry Software Reliability 
Association, or MISRA (see www.misra.org.uk).

Among other things, they appear to be trying to provide support to anyone in 
the Motor Industry that is developing software.  They publish guidelines for 
safe coding (in C) practices and such.  I can't speak to how good those 
guidelines are, as I haven't yet looked at them, but it seems to me that this 
is a positive thing.  I'm a big believer in this type of industry support 
group.  If the right people are involved, I've seen groups like this really 
help out their respective industries.

Oh, I should note also that the group's charter doesn't specifically discuss 
_secure_ code, but it seems to me that secure code is encompassed in what 
they're actually doing.  A quick glance through their Forums page shows 
IT-Sec as one of the possible forum themes.

In any event, is anyone here aware of MISRA?  How about other similar 
industry-specific groups?  I'll gladly add these to our list of secure coding 
resources on www.securecoding.org.

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk
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