Commercial Off-The-Shelf software. The term is generally used to describe governments' current policy of purchasing standard software packages rather than developing their own. The intention is purely to make cost savings.

In most cases this is an obvious policy to follow. However, it raises questions over security products. Commercial security is not usually the same as military security - and there is sometimes a suspicion that some government agencies apply pressure to have their own covert facilities built into the product. See, for example, NSAKEY. During the Cold War, it was generally accepted that both sides established foreign companies that sought to get their own software into government agencies.

Another criticism levelled at COTS is the unpredictability of market forces: the company supplying COTS products today could go out of business tomorrow, or even be purchased by a foreign company.