Trusted Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Components

Sandia has a long history in the application of trusted components for high consequence mission-critical nuclear weapons and other military systems. In these systems "trust" has always been of vital importance. Today, with the increasing use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Components, Sandia National Laboratories has developed processes which allow the use of these commercially-available, low cost parts in trusted applications.

A Trusted COTS Component is one that that can be trusted (have confidence) to meet all system performance requirements for the intended life. The key elements for trust and the processes used to ensure trust include confidence that the part:

• Is of the highest quality available.
• Has the reliability to meet high reliability performance in military environments.
• Confidence that the part has not be counterfeited.
• Confidence that the part has not be altered to provide compromising features to an adversary.

Fact Sheet

• Trusted COTS Program

For additional information or questions, please email us at Custom Components.