Identifying Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Product Risks: The COTS Usage Risk Evaluation

The expansion in use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products has been accompanied by an increase in program failures. Many of these failures have been due to a lack of familiarity with the changed approach that COTS products demand. This report describes the development of an approach to reduce the number of program failures attributable to COTS software: the COTS Usage Risk Evaluation (CURE). The origin of CURE and an overview of the method, along with detail on the materials and mechanisms used in CURE, are provided. The CURE process is outlined and the results of the evaluations that have been conducted are summarized. Finally, possible future directions for CURE are explored