Trade-off costs of software trustworthy attributes

Software trustworthiness is an important criterion to evaluate software quality. Software trustworthiness consists of reliability, security, availability, etc. In order to improve software trustworthiness, some strategies are used to improve trustworthy attributes. However, the strategy to increase a certain trustworthy attribute will lead to a decrease in other trustworthy attributes. Meanwhile, the loss costs will rise. Therefore, based on the production theory in the field of microeconomics, the relationships between trustworthy attributes are proposed when the strategies are used. Then, the weight of each trustworthy attribute is obtained by using an analytic hierarchy process. When strategies are used, trustworthy attributes with an inhibition relationship are analyzed by utilizing weights of trustworthy attributes. Furthermore, for trustworthy attributes with an inhibition relationship, the optimal trade-off costs mathematical model is established. Finally, an application is given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed model. © 2019 Totem Publisher, Inc. All rights reserved.