One often-overlooked risk in the bustling ecosystem of open-source software are vulnerabilities introduced through software dependencies. We mention this because today, a malicious actor took over a RubyGems package name with more than two million downloads. Mend.io technology detected the package before it could be used for an attack, but the case of ‘gemnasium-gitlab-service‘ serves as an important reminder of the risk of neglecting dependency management.

Companies are increasingly concerned about the security of applications built on open source components, especially when they’re involved in mergers and acquisitions. Just like copyright for works of art, each piece of open source software has a license that states legally binding conditions for its use.

Bytesafe is a secure package management solution that helps organizations of all sizes protect their software supply chains from known vulnerabilities and other threats. In our commitment to enhance the security of open-source ecosystems, today we are excited to announce the availability of Bytesafe Community Edition, a free and open source version of our software that is available.

As cloud technology continues to be a cornerstone of modern businesses and organizations, securing cloud environments has become more crucial than ever. Enter cloud security posture management (CSPM), a proactive approach to ensuring the security of cloud infrastructures. With CSPM, organizations can continuously monitor, assess, and remediate potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in their cloud environments. But when choosing a CSPM solution, is open source the way to go?

OSINT stands for open-source intelligence. It is the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information from publicly available sources, such as social media, government reports, newspapers, and other public documents. OSINT is commonly used by intelligence agencies, private investigators, and law enforcement to gather information about an individual or organization. The OSINT framework showcases the multiple ways in which organizations can gather intelligence.

Open source code is everywhere, and it needs to be managed to mitigate security risks. Developers are tasked with creating engaging and reliable applications faster than ever. To achieve this, they rely heavily on open source code to quickly add functionality to their proprietary software. With open source code making up an estimated 60-80% of proprietary applications’ code bases, managing it has become critical to reducing an organization’s security risk.

According to the 2023 “Open Source Security and Risk Analysis” (OSSRA) report, 96% of commercial code contains open source. In fact, 76% of the code scanned by Black Duck® Audit Services was open source. In other words, no matter what applications your organization builds, uses, or sells, you can be virtually certain that the application contains open source.