Computer system integrity through a combination of certifiable and qualifiable software

A method of improving integrity of a computer system, the method comprising the computer system:

• executing a certifiable software application composed of static program instructions executed sequentially to process input data to produce an output on which the computer system is configured to operate, the certifiable software application being certifiable for the computer system according to a certification standard;
• executing a qualifiable software application during execution of the certifiable software application, the qualifiable software application using a model iteratively built using a machine learning algorithm to process the input data to produce a corresponding output, the qualifiable software application being non-certifiable for the computer system according to the certification standard;
• cross-checking the output from the certifiable software application by comparison with the corresponding output from the qualifiable software application to verify the output from the certifiable software application, and thereby improve integrity of the computer system;
• and
• generating an alert that the output from the certifiable software application is unverified when the comparison indicates that the output differs from the corresponding output by more than a threshold.

A computer-readable storage medium that is non-transitory and has computer-readable program code stored therein that in response to execution by processing circuitry, causes a computer system to at least:

• execute a certifiable software application composed of static program instructions executed sequentially to process input data to produce an output on which the computer system is configured to operate, the certifiable software application being certifiable for the computer system according to a certification standard;
• execute a qualifiable software application during execution of the certifiable software application, the qualifiable software application using a model iteratively built using a machine learning algorithm to process the input data to produce a corresponding output, the qualifiable software application being non-certifiable for the computer system according to the certification standard;
• cross-check the output from the certifiable software application by comparison with the corresponding output from the qualifiable software application to verify the output from the certifiable software application, and thereby improve integrity of the computer system;
• and
• generate an alert that the output from the certifiable software application is unverified when the comparison indicates that the output differs from the corresponding output by more than a threshold.