A PLE-based auditing method for protecting restricted content in derived products

Many organizations that produce a portfolio of products for different customers need to ensure that sensitive or restricted content that may appear in some products must not appear in others. Examples of this need include complying with statutes in different countries of sale, protection of intellectual property developed specifically for one customer, and more. For organizations operating under these requirements and producing their products under a product line engineering paradigm that relies on automation in product derivation, there is a need for a method to ensure that the content restrictions have been met in the derived products. This paper describes an auditing method that meets this need. It was created for use in the Second Generation Product Line Engineering approach that is being applied by Lockheed Martin in their AEGIS ship combat system product line.