Selecting COTS anti-virus software for an international bank: some lessons learned!
Cornelius Ncube · 2004
Successful selection of COTS software is difficult and requires tight integration of 2 processes - multicriteria decision making and requirements engineering - which are both complex and problematic. The selection of COTS software is a multicriteria decision-making process. However, it is problematic because the selection criteria (i.e. the requirements) are often incomplete and interdependent, and one COTS software rarely satisfies all of the criteria's. However, when selecting anti-virus systems, there are added problems. The reason is that for the anti-virus systems, we cannot just run and test the software as we would do in other systems. We report some lessons learned in the selection of a anti-virus software for a merchant bank. These lessons were later incorporated into methods for COTS software selection.