Intro to the SEI CERT Coding Standard for Fortran

Fortran is one of the oldest high-level programming languages still in active use and remains a cornerstone of scientific, engineering, and high-performance computing (HPC) software in critical applications areas, such as climate and weather prediction, aerospace, nuclear energy, computational physics, and national security. Fortran provides several features that are particularly well-suited for scientific and high-performance computing, including intrinsic multidimensional array operations, native array slicing and whole-array syntax, built-in support for numerical computation, explicit parallel programming constructs, and language-level facilities for efficient vectorization and mathematical optimization. Recently, the Fortran community has shown growing interest in secure software development practices, vulnerability prevention, and secure coding standards. The SEI CERT Coding Standard for Fortran leverages expertise in secure coding practices and provides well-documented and enforceable coding guidelines to audit Fortran software.

Attendees will learn how to

• identify common security risks in Fortran
• navigate the SEI CERT Coding Standard for Fortran
• leverage Fortran safety features for secure coding
• improve software quality through secure coding practices