Software Engineering Institute

This paper describes a software assurance competency model that can be used by individual professionals to improve their software assurance skills. It can also be used by universities to align course content with skills needed in industry, and it can be used by industry to help employee professional growth as well as to screen prospective employees. The knowledge and skill areas in the competency model are based on the Master of Software Assurance reference curriculum that has been previously approved by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM. The model is aligned with a similar effort by the IEEE Professional Activities Board to develop a competency model for software engineering practitioners.