Is open source the greatest path to security?

In the latest issue of Infosecurity magazine, Darren Prehaye, Senior Solutions Architect from DSbD partner, Digital Catapult discusses the risks, rewards and benefits to using open source code and explores the many ways that open sources can contribute to even more secure future computer systems.

The Open Source Evolution

Open source involves organisations using open and freely available code and it has become increasingly popular today, with recent data from the Synopsys Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report revealing that 78% of code in codebases today is open source.

When thinking about the benefits of open source, not only is the code free to use, but it offers organisations more transparency because they can see the source code they are using and assess its security for themselves.

They can also see changes made to the code and collaborate with developers to improve it. Additionally, because so many organisations are using the same piece of code, bugs and weaknesses are often identified faster and the community of users will provide expert advice to remediate them. This means there are more good eyes on the code, which are all motivated by the same objective to make it as secure as possible.