Ever wonder why it is so difficult to get your hands on high-quality applications? CIO Update guest columnist Ed Adams of Security Innovation has a few answers.

Consumer and business products that we use every day -- calculators, lawnmowers, stoves -- are very robust and meet or even exceed industry and legal standards. And, although they might fail from time to time, I remain comfortable using them.

So why then does software lag in terms of overall quality compared to these devices? Why dont we use a comparable quality assurance model for software so that we can relish in the thrill of having applications that arent fragile when put into production?

The reasons are many, but two of the primary ones are:

People don't consider (or even know about) all the aspects of software quality. Application reliability and security expertise is a rare and valuable commodity. Using the familiar framework, the food pyramid, allow me to discuss why security and reliability defects persistently exist.

I won't bore you with lots of analogous statements to the food chart because at a micro level, comparing software applications to cuisine is like, well, comparing apples to oranges (pun intended).

However, at a conceptual level, this proposed software quality pyramid and the food-group pyramid are similar because both are designed to set guidelines for the general population looking for a well-balanced approach and they are de-facto categories set by independent assessors for the betterment of their respective industries.

This article was first published on CIOupdate.com. To read the full article, click here.