The reliability performance measures for low and high or continuous demand modes of operation of safety instrumented systems(SISs) are examined and compared by analyzing the official definitions in IEC 61508 standard. This paper also presents a status of common cause factor(CCF) models used in IEC 61508 and problems relating CCF modelling are discussed and ideas to solve these ones are suggested. An example with mixed M-out-of-N architecture is carried out to illustrate the proposed methods.