System and method for software certification

A system for certifying a software product's reliability, comprising:

• a software product received from a product vendor;
• and
• a software certification laboratory for instrumenting the software product to collect information about the software behavior when the software product is used,
• wherein the software product, after instrumented by the software certification laboratory, is used by a plurality of users, and the information collected by the software products includes a plurality of usage data and a plurality of failure data from each of the plurality of users,
• wherein the software certification laboratory receives and analyzes the plurality of usage data and the plurality of failure data from each of the plurality of users collected by the software product, builds an operational profile according to a result from the analyzing, and issues a certificate of reliability to the software product, and
• wherein the software certification laboratory is further configured to:
• digitally sign the software product to be verified;
• verify the digital signature of the software product;
• and
• employ a residual testing tool in the software product that collects information about the software product behavior as the software product is used.

A method for certifying a software product's reliability, comprising:

• employing a residual testing tool to the software, wherein the residual testing tool is configured to collect information about the software product behavior as the software product is used;
• digitally signing the software product;
• distributing the signed software product to a software certification laboratory, wherein the software certification laboratory verifies the digital signature of the software product and instruments the residual testing tool employed in the software product to collect information about the software product behavior;
• distributing the verified software product to a plurality of users, wherein the residual testing tool collects a plurality of usage data and a plurality of failure data from each of the plurality of users while the software product is used;
• reporting the collected usage and failure data to the software certification laboratory;
• and
• analyzing the collected data to issues a certificate of reliability to the software product.