Source software safe

The visibility into the script with which programs are written that reveals exactly how they work is immensely important for ensuring they're secure. With free software components, organizations don't have to assume anything. They can examine everything themselves and make adjustments as needed to meet organizational requirements and surface them—and their code—back to a larger community of users who can recycle them.

Most licensed software offerings require organizations to assume they're working as they should be, aren't doing anything malicious or that could compromise security, and that users have faith in them. Although such approaches may be acceptable for individual consumers, it's difficult to base the enterprise on pure faith alone.

Closed-source programs only enable a limited number of people who work for the companies licensing the products to view or fix source code; open-source solutions allow anyone to do so. The DIY mantra that's part of configuring open source for enterprise needs involves a lot of work, most of which pertains to testing. The sheer number of lines alone required to review source code can prove exhausting.

The advantages of RPA, however, are pivotal to testing programs at an enterprise scale. RPA bots can perform such tasks rapidly and, unlike people who've already looked at a few thousand lines of script, are as accurate at the end of the day's work as they are at the beginning. Due to its community construction and largely unregulated distribution, a variety of risks—including some cybersecurity risks—come with the use of open-source software.

If you are part of the community for a specific project, you often get advanced warning before it is made public to groups like OWASP and NVD, but so does anyone else that is part of the community. This means that if you are lax in maintaining the latest versions or updating components you are leaving yourself open to risks, as vulnerabilities are often identified and exploited by cybercriminals.

Open-source software comes with no claims or legal obligations for security and community support informing you how to implement it securely may be lacking. The developers responsible for creating software are often not security experts and may not understand how to implement best practices.

Often open-source software includes or requires the use of third-party libraries, pulled in from package managers without inspection. The black-box nature of these libraries makes it more difficult and time-consuming to identify and patch any vulnerabilities they might inject.

Many of these licenses are incompatible with each other, meaning that certain components cannot be used together since you have to comply with all terms when using open-source software. The more components you use, the more difficult it becomes to track and compare all of the license stipulations. This makes it impossible to use in proprietary software and less attractive for use in commercial purposes.

There are tools that can be used to audit open source code for known vulnerabilities and databases that can be manually searched. Being able to see the attack storyline and putting it into context helps you to understand how the attack occurred and to close down vulnerable gaps across your entire network.

Open source code is just another part of your supply chain, and an attack that leverages vulnerabilities in an open source library, package or application is just another kind of supply-chain attack. Therefore, no matter what dependencies you have, whether they are open-source or proprietary, you need to treat all code on your network with the same suspicion and monitor not just where it came from but also what it is doing.

Like this article? Record Performance. Defeat every attack, at every stage of the threat lifecycle with SentinelOne. Automation is usually the best option for most companies, as manually checking your open-source use will require significant investments of time, resources, and budget. Stay up to date! What is open-source software? Open-source vs. Open-source software and data privacy However, there are still a number of security concerns when it comes to open-source software.

How to secure your data when downloading open-source software The key to keeping your data secure is to monitor for new threats continuously. Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription. You've successfully subscribed to Iron Bastion Security Blog! Could not sign up! Invalid sign up link.