Barr Group’s 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey Reveals Little Movement Toward Safer Product Development

GERMANTOWN, Maryland – February 26, 2018 – Barr Group, The Embedded Systems Experts^®, has released the latest findings from its 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey regarding the state of embedded systems safety. Preliminary results show that only 1 in 4 safety-critical device developers are following all industry-recommended software development best practices for increasing safety. Overall there has also been little progress in the last three years in tightening design processes to improve the safety of devices that can kill or injure. With nearly 30 percent of embedded systems designers creating devices that can potentially harm end users in the event of malfunction, this lack of improvement is a major concern for the industry.

Completed by more than 1,700 qualified professional designers of embedded systems, the 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey assesses the state of product development practices of engineers from around the world (46 percent from North America, 33 percent from Europe, and 10 percent from Asia). While there have been some wins across the embedded systems industry overall — such as (1) greater numbers of developers of internet-connected devices including security as a product design requirement and (2) an increase in automating the enforcement of some coding standard rules — there has been no apparent progress in the specific area of safety-critical devices.

“This year’s survey confirms that products in development have become increasingly complex, for example, having more microprocessors aboard, which opens the door wider to opportunities for product malfunction,” said Barr Group CTO Michael Barr. “It is disheartening to see that many designers of safety-critical systems continue to skip software development steps that are known to reduce the number of bugs and unplanned behaviors in embedded systems.”

Of the industry-recommended design practices highlighted in the survey, the following statistics are of greatest concern:

43% don’t do regular code reviews
41% don’t perform regression testing
38% don’t comply with any safety standard
33% don’t use a static analysis tool
17% don’t follow any coding standard

“Of safety-critical embedded products currently in development, two out of three target the medical, industrial, automotive, and defense/aerospace industries,” Barr pointed out. “Moving forward, we hope that more developers will follow design practices known to be effective in maximizing the safety of end users.”

2018 Barr Group Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey Results at Embedded World

Join Barr Group at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany February 27–March 1, 2018, for two special presentations by Barr Group CTO Michael Barr, highlighting more detailed results from the 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey.

The following presentations will take place at the OpenSystems Media Embedded Pavilion located at Stand 3A-507:

February 27, 2018 (11:00AM–11:30AM CET): 2018 Embedded Systems Safety Survey Results
February 28, 2018 (11:00AM–11:30AM CET): 2018 Embedded Systems Security Survey Results

For more information about the Embedded Systems Safety and Security Survey, contact experts@barrgroup.com.

About Barr Group

Barr Group, The Embedded Systems Experts^®, is an independent provider of world-class product design, training, and corporate and legal technical consulting services for the embedded systems industry. Founded by internationally known experts in the design of safe and secure embedded systems, Barr Group is driven by its mission to help companies improve the overall reliability and security of all embedded systems–based applications. Applications strengthened as a result of services and resources provided by Barr Group include those in the automotive, medical, defense, industrial controls, consumer electronics, and Internet of Things (IoT) markets. Barr Group has assisted thousands of engineers in the development of safer, more reliable electronic products through its Embedded C Coding Standard^™ and continues to push the embedded systems industry forward with the annual release of Barr Group’s Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey^™. For more information about Barr Group, go to www.barrgroup.com.