Maintaining Application Security While Leveraging The Use of Open Source Software

Building better software faster by automating, managing and auditing the selection, use and governance of open source across the application lifecycle isn’t just a lofty goal, it’s a prerequisite for today’s shortened development cycles with high expectations of innovative, game-changing applications. In fact, today’s most efficient software development teams are only writing about 20-30% of the code for new applications; 70-80% is a combination of reused code, open source code and components downloaded from the Internet.

Organizations have learned that, rather than developing the majority of code internally, success means encouraging the use of open source software components to benefit from enhanced flexibility, greater ability to innovate and significant cost savings. But how do leading organizations manage the potential challenges of technical failure, security and IP concerns?

Organizations must consider the policy and process decisions and ongoing governance and ALM process implications that come with the use of OSS, including...