A near-miss management system architecture for the forensic investigation of software failures

Abstract

Abstract-Digital forensics has been proposed as a methodology for doing root-cause analysis of major software failures for quite a while. Despite this, similar software failures still occur repeatedly. A reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining detailed evidence of software failures. Acquiring such evidence can be challenging, as the relevant data may be lost or corrupt following a software system's crash. This paper proposes the use of near-miss analysis to improve on the collection of evidence for software failures. Near-miss analysis is an incident investigation technique that detects and subsequently analyses indicators of failures. The results of a near-miss analysis investigation are then used to detect an upcoming failure before the failure unfolds. The detection of these indicators -known as near misses -therefore provides an opportunity to proactively collect relevant data that can be used as digital evidence, pertaining to software failures. A Near Miss Management System (NMS) architecture for the forensic investigation of software failures is proposed. The viability of the proposed architecture is demonstrated through a prototype.

A Review on Software Quality Forensics: Techniques, Challenges, and Limitations

“…In another paper Bella & Eloff. [13] " suggests near-miss analysis can enhance the gathering of valid proof regarding software flaws. According to Ekanem & Meye.…”