Author: Jono Bergquist

Open source software (OSS) brings a wealth of benefits; speed, innovation, cost savings. But when serving customers in highly regulated industries like defense, energy, or finance, a new complication enters the picture—compliance.

Imagine your DevOps-fluent engineering team has been leveraging OSS to accelerate product delivery, and suddenly, a major customer hits you with a security compliance questionnaire. What now? 

Regulatory compliance isn’t just about managing the risks of OSS for your business anymore; it’s about providing concrete evidence that you meet standards like FedRAMP and the Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF).

The tricky part is that the OSS “suppliers” making up 70-90% of your software supply chain aren’t traditional vendors—they don’t have the same obligations or accountability, and they’re not necessarily aligned with your compliance needs. 

So, who bears the responsibility? You do.

The OSS your engineering team consumes is your resource and your responsibility. This means you’re not only tasked with managing the security risks of using OSS but also with proving that both your applications and your OSS supply chain meet compliance standards. 

In this post, we’ll explore why you’re ultimately responsible for the OSS you consume and outline practical steps to help you use OSS while staying compliant.

Learn about CISA’s SSDF attestation form and how to meet compliance.

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What does it mean to use open source software in a regulated environment?

Highly regulated environments add a new wrinkle to the OSS security narrative. The OSS developers that author the software dependencies that make up the vast majority of modern software supply chains aren’t vendors in the traditional sense. They are more of a volunteer force that allow you to re-use their work but it is a take it or leave it agreement. You have no recourse if it doesn’t work as expected, or worse, has vulnerabilities in it.

So, how do you meet compliance standards when your software supply chain is built on top of a foundation of OSS?

Who is the vendor? You are!

Whether you have internalized this or not the open source software that your developers consume is your resource and thus your responsibility.

This means that you are shouldered with the burden of not only managing the security risk of consuming OSS but also having to shoulder the burden of proving that both your applications and the your OSS supply chain meets compliance.

Open source software is a natural resource

Before we jump into how to accomplish the task set forth in the previous section, let’s take some time to understand why you are the vendor when it comes to open source software.

The common idea is that OSS is produced by a 3rd-party that isn’t part of your organization, so they are the software supplier. Shouldn’t they be the ones required to secure their code? They control and maintain what goes in, right? How are they not responsible?

To answer that question, let’s think about OSS as a natural resource that is shared by the public at large, for instance the public water supply.

This shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. We already use terms like upstream and downstream to think about the relationship between software dependencies and the global software supply chain.

Using this mental model, it becomes easier to understand that a public good isn’t a supplier. You can’t ask a river or a lake for an audit report that it is contaminant free and safe to drink. 

Instead the organization that processes and provides the water to the community is responsible for testing the water and guaranteeing its safety. In this metaphor, your company is the one processing the water and selling it as pristine bottled water. 

How do you pass the buck to your “supplier”? You can’t. That’s the point.

This probably has you asking yourself, if I am responsible for my own OSS supply chain then how to meet a compliance standard for something that I don’t have control over? Keep reading and you’ll find out.

How do I use OSS and stay compliant?

While compliance standards are often thought of as rigid, the reality is much more nuanced. Just because your organization doesn’t own/control the open source projects that you consume doesn’t mean that you can’t use OSS and meet compliance requirements.

There are a few different steps that you need to take in order to build a “reasonably secure” OSS supply chain that will pass a compliance audit. We’ll walk you through the steps below:

Step 1 — Know what you have (i.e., an SBOM inventory)

The foundation of the global software supply chain is the SBOM (software bill of materials) standard. Each of the security and compliance functions outlined in the steps below use or manipulate an SBOM.

SBOMs are the foundational component of the global software supply chain because they record the ingredients that were used to produce the application an end-user will consume. If you don’t have a good grasp of the ingredients of your applications there isn’t much hope for producing any upstream security or compliance guarantees.

The best way to create observability into your software supply chain is to generate an SBOM for every single application in your DevSecOps build pipeline—at each stage of the pipeline!

Step 2 — Maintain a historical record of application source code

To meet compliance standards like FedRAMP and SSDF, you need to be able to maintain a historical record of the source code of your applications, including: 

• Where it comes from, 
• Who created it, and 
• Any modifications made to it over time.

SBOMs were designed to meet these requirements. They act as a record of how applications were built and when/where OSS dependencies were introduced. They also double as compliance artifacts that prove you are compliant with regulatory standards.

Governments aren’t content with self-attestation (at least not for long); they need hard evidence to verify that you are trustworthy. Even though SSDF is currently self-attestation only, the federal government is known for rolling out compliance frameworks in stages. First advising on best-practices, then requiring self-attestation, finally external validation via a certification process. 

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is a good example of this dynamic process. It recently transitioned from self-attestation to external validation with the introduction of the 2.0 release of the framework.

Step 3 — Manage your OSS vulnerabilities

Not only do you need to keep a record of applications as they evolve over time, you have to track the known vulnerabilities of your OSS dependencies to achieve compliance. Just as SBOMs prove provenance, vulnerability scans are proof that your application and its dependencies aren’t vulnerable. These scans are a crucial piece of the evidence that you will need to provide to your compliance officer as you go through the certification process. 

Remember the buck stops with you! If the OSS that your application consumes doesn’t supply an SBOM and vulnerability scan (which is essentially all OSS projects) then you are responsible to create them. There is no vendor to pass the blame to for proving that your supply chain is reasonably secure and thus compliant.

Step 4 — Continuous compliance of OSS supply chain

It is important to recognize that modern compliance standards are no longer sprints but marathons. Not only do you have to prove that your application(s) are compliant at the time of audit but you have to be able to demonstrate that it remains secure continuously in order to maintain your certification.

This can be challenging to scale but it is made easier by integrating SBOM generation, vulnerability scanning and policy checks directly into the DevSecOps pipeline. This is the approach that modern, SBOM-powered SCAs advocate for.

By embedding the compliance policy-as-code into your DevSecOps pipeline as policy gates, compliance can be maintained over time. Developers are alerted when their code doesn’t meet a compliance standard and are directed to take the corrective action. Also, these compliance checks can be used to automatically generate the compliance artifacts needed. 

You already have an automated DevSecOps pipeline that is producing and delivering applications with minimal human intervention, why not take advantage of this existing tooling to automate compliance in the same way that security was integrated directly into DevOps.

Real-world Examples

To help bring these concepts to life, we’ve outlined some real-world examples of how open source software and compliance intersect:

Open source project has unfixed vulnerabilities

This is far and wide the most common issue that comes up during compliance audits. One of your application’s OSS dependencies has a known vulnerability that has been sitting in the backlog for months or even years!

There are several reasons why an OSS developer might leave a known vulnerability unresolved:

• They prioritize a feature over fixing a vulnerability
• The vulnerability is from a third-party dependency they don’t control and can’t fix
• They don’t like fixing vulnerabilities and choose to ignore it
• They reviewed the vulnerability and decided it’s not likely to be exploited, so it’s not worth their time
• They’re planning a codebase refactor that will address the vulnerability in the future

These are all rational reasons for vulnerabilities to persist in a codebase. Remember, OSS projects are owned and maintained by 3rd-party developers who control the repository; they make no guarantees about its quality. They are not vendors.

You, on the other hand, are a vendor and must meet compliance requirements. The responsibility falls on you. An OSS vulnerability management program is how you meet your compliance requirements while enjoying the benefits of OSS.

Need to fill out a supplier questionnaire

Imagine you’re a cloud service provider or software vendor. Your sales team is trying to close a deal with a significant customer. As the contract nears signing, the customer’s legal team requests a security questionnaire. They’re in the business of protecting their organization from financial risk stemming from their supply chain, and your company is about to become part of that supply chain.

These forms are usually from lawyers, very formal, and not focused on technical attacks. They just want to know what you’re using. The quick answer? “Here’s our SBOM.” 

Compliance comes in the form of public standards like FedRAMP, SSDF, NIST, etc., and these less formal security questionnaires. Either way, being unable to provide a full accounting of the risks in your software supply chain can be a speed bump to your organization’s revenue growth and success.

Integrating SBOM scanning, generation, and management deeply into your DevSecOps pipeline is key to accelerating the sales process and your organization’s overall success.

Prove provenance

CISA’s SSDF Attestation form requires that enterprises selling software to the federal government can produce a historical record of their applications. Quoting directly: “The software producer [must] maintain provenance for internal code and third-party components incorporated into the software to the greatest extent feasible.”

If you want access to the revenue opportunities the U.S. federal government offers, SSDF attestation is the needle you have to thread. Meeting this requirement without hiring an army of compliance engineers to manually review your entire DevSecOps pipeline demands an automated OSS component observability and management system.

Often, we jump to cryptographic signatures, encryption keys, trust roots—this quickly becomes a mess. Really, just a hash of the files in a database (read: SBOM inventory) satisfies the requirement. Sometimes, simpler is better. 

Discover the “easy button” to SSDF Attestation and OSS supply chain compliance in our previous blog post.

Takeaways

OSS Is Not a Vendor—But You Are! The best way to have your OSS cake and eat it too (without the indigestion) is to:

1. Know Your Ingredients: Maintain an SBOM inventory of your OSS supply chain.
2. Maintain a Complete Historical Record: Keep track of your application’s source code and build process.
3. Scan for Known Vulnerabilities: Regularly check your OSS dependencies.
4. Continuous Compliance thru Automation: Generate compliance records automatically to scale your compliance process.

There are numerous reasons to aim for compliance, especially for your OSS supply chain:

• Balance Gains Against Risks: Leverage OSS benefits while managing associated risks.
• Reduce Financial Risk: Protect your organization’s existing revenue.
• Increase Revenue Opportunities: Access new markets that mandate specific compliance standards.
• Avoid Becoming a Cautionary Tale: Stay ahead of potential security incidents.

Regardless of your motivation for wanting to use OSS and use it responsibly (i.e., securely and compliantly), Anchore is here to help. Reach out to our team to learn more about how to build and manage a secure and compliant OSS supply chain.

Learn the container security best practices to reduce the risk of software supply chain attacks.

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In previous blog posts we have covered the risks of open source software (OSS) and security best practices to manage that risk. From there we zoomed in on the benefits of tightly coupling two of those best practices (SBOMs and vulnerability scanning). 

Now, we’ll dig deeper into the practical considerations of integrating this paired solution into a DevSecOps pipeline. By examining the design and implementation of SBOMs and vulnerability scanning, we’ll illuminate the path to creating a holistic open source software (OSS) risk management program.

Learn about the role that SBOMs for the security of your organization in this white paper.

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How do I integrate SBOM management and vulnerability scanning into my development process?

Ideally, you want to generate an SBOM at each stage of the software development process (see image below). By generating an SBOM and scanning for vulnerabilities at each stage, you unlock a number of novel use-cases and benefits that we covered previously.

Let’s break down how to integrate SBOM generation and vulnerability scanning into each stage of the development pipeline:

Source (PLAN & CODE)

The easiest way to integrate SBOM generation and vulnerability scanning into the design and coding phases is to provide CLI (command-line interface) tools to your developers. Engineers are already used to these tools—and have a preference for them!

If you’re going the open source route, we recommend both Syft (SBOM generation) and Grype (vulnerability scanner) as easy options to get started. If you’re interested in an integrated enterprise tool then you’ll want to look at AnchoreCTL.

Developers can generate SBOMs and run vulnerability scans right from the workstation. By doing this at design or commit time developers can shift security left and know immediately about security implications of their design decisions.

If existing vulnerabilities are found, developers can immediately pivot to OSS dependencies that are clean or start a conversation with their security team to understand if their preferred framework will be a deal breaker. Either way, security risk is addressed early before any design decisions are made that will be difficult to roll back.

Build (BUILD + TEST)

The ideal location to integrate SBOM generation and vulnerability scanning during the build and test phases are directly into the organization’s continuous integration (CI) pipeline.

The same self-contained CLI tools used during the source stage are integrated as additional steps into CI scripts/runbooks. When a developer pushes a commit that triggers the build process, the new steps are executed and both an SBOM and vulnerability scan are created as outputs. 

Check out our docs site to see how AnchoreCTL (running in distributed mode) makes this integration a breeze.

If you’re having trouble convincing your developers to jump on the SBOM train, we recommend that developers think about all security scans as just another unit test that is part of their testing suite.

Running these steps in the CI pipeline delays feedback a little versus performing the check as incremental code commits are made as an application is being coded but it is still light years better than waiting till a release is code complete. 

If you are unable to enforce vulnerability scanning of OSS dependencies by your engineering team, a CI-based strategy can be a good happy medium. It is much easier to ensure every build runs exactly the same each time than it is to do the same for developers.

Release (aka Registry)

Another integration option is the container registry. This option will require you to either roll your own service that will regularly call the registry and scan new containers or use a service that does this for you.

See how Anchore Enterprise can automate this entire process by reviewing our integration docs.

Regardless of the path you choose, you will end up creating an IAM service account within your CI application which will give your SBOM and vulnerability scanning solution the access to your registries.

The release stage tends to be fairly far along in the development process and is not an ideal location for these functions to run. Most of the benefits of a shift left security posture won’t be available anymore.

If this is an additional vulnerability scanning stage—rather than the sole stage—then this is a fantastic environment to integrate into. Software supply chain attacks that target registries are popular and can be prevented with a continuous scanning strategy.

Deploy

This is the traditional stage of the SDLC (software development lifecycle) to run vulnerability scans. SBOM generation can be added on as another step in an organization’s continuous deployment (CD) runbook.

Similar to the build stage, the best integration method is by calling CLI tools directly in the deploy script to generate the SBOM and then scan it for vulnerabilities.

Alternatively, if you utilize a container orchestrator like Kubernetes you can also configure an admission controller to act as a deployment gate. The admissions controller should be configured to make a call out to a standalone SBOM generator and vulnerability scanner. 

If you’d like to understand how this is implemented with Anchore Enterprise, see our docs.

While this is the traditional location for running vulnerability scans, it is not recommended that this is the only stage to scan for vulnerabilities. Feedback about security issues would be arriving very late in the development process and prior design decisions may prevent vulnerabilities from being easily remediated. Don’t do this unless you have no other option.

Production (OPERATE + MONITOR)

This is not a traditional stage to run vulnerability scans since the goal is to prevent vulnerabilities from getting to production. Regardless, this is still an important environment to scan. Production containers have a tendency to drift from their pristine build states (DevSecOps pipelines are leaky!).

Also, new vulnerabilities are discovered all of the time and being able to prioritize remediation efforts to the most vulnerable applications (i.e., runtime containers) considerably reduces the risk of exploitation.

The recommended way to run SBOM generation and vulnerability scans in production is to run an independent container with the SBOM generator and vulnerability scanner installed. Most container orchestrators have SDKs that will allow you to integrate an SBOM generator and vulnerability scanner to the preferred administration CLI (e.g., kubectl for k8s clusters). 

Read how Anchore Enterprise integrates these components together into a single container for both Kubernetes and Amazon ECS.

How do I manage all of the SBOMs and vulnerability scans?

Tightly coupling SBOM generation and vulnerability scanning creates a number of benefits but it also creates one problem; a firehose of data. This unintended side effect is named SBOM sprawl and it inevitably becomes a headache in and of itself.

The concise solution to this problem is to create a centralized SBOM repository. The brevity of this answer downplays the challenges that go along with building and managing a new data pipeline.

We’ll walk you through the high-level steps below but if you’re looking to understand the challenges and solutions of SBOM sprawl in more detail, we have a separate article that covers that.

Integrating SBOMs and vulnerability scanning for better OSS risk management

Assuming you’ve deployed an SBOM generator and vulnerability scanner into at least one of your development stages (as detailed above in “How do I integrate SBOM management and vulnerability scanning into my development process?”) and have an SBOM repository for storing your SBOMs and/or vulnerability scans, we can now walkthrough how to tie these systems together.

1. Create a system to pull vulnerability feeds from reputable sources. If you’re looking for a way to get started here, read our post on how to get started.
2. Regularly scan your catalog of SBOMs for vulnerabilities, storing the results alongside the SBOMs.
3. Implement a query system to extract insights from your inventory of SBOMs.
4. Create a dashboard to visualize your software supply chain’s health.
5. Build alerting automation to ping your team as newly discovered vulnerabilities are announced.
6. Maintain all of these DIY security applications and tools. 
7. Continue to incrementally improve on these tools as new threats emerge, technologies evolve and development processes change.

If this feels like more work than you’re willing to take on, this is why security vendors exist. See the benefits of a managed SBOM-powered SCA below.

Prefer not to DIY? Evaluate Anchore Enterprise

Anchore Enterprise was designed from the ground up to provide a reliable software supply chain security platform that requires the least amount of work to integrate and maintain. Included in the product is:

• Out-of-the-box integrations for popular CI/CD software (e.g., GitHub, Jenkins, GitLab, etc.)
• End-to-end SBOM management
• Enterprise-grade vulnerability scanning with best-in-class false positives
• Built-in SBOM drift detection
• Remediation recommendations
• Continuous visibility and monitoring of software supply chain health

Enterprises like NVIDIA, Cisco, Infoblox, etc. have chosen Anchore Enterprise as their “easy button” to achieve open source software security with the least amount of lift.

If you’re interested to learn more about how to roll out a complete OSS security solution without the blood, sweat and tears that come with the DIY route—reach out to our team to get a demo or try Anchore Enterprise yourself with a 15-day free trial.

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The rise of open-source software (OSS) development and DevOps practices has unleashed a paradigm shift in OSS security. As traditional approaches to OSS security have proven inadequate in the face of rapid development cycles, the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) has re-made OSS vulnerability management in the era of DevSecOps.

This blog post zooms in on two best practices from our introductory article on OSS security and the software supply chain:

1. Maintain a Software Dependency Inventory
2. Implement Vulnerability Scanning

These two best practices are set apart from the rest because they are a natural pair. We’ll cover how this novel approach,

• Scaled OSS vulnerability management under the pressure of rapid software delivery
• Is set apart from legacy SCAs
• Unlocks new use-cases in software supply chain security, OSS risk management, etc.
• Benefits software engineering orgs
• Benefits an organization’s overall security posture
• Has measurably impacted modern enterprises, such as, NVIDIA, Infoblox, etc.

Whether you’re a seasoned DevSecOps professional or just beginning to tackle the challenges of securing your software supply chain, this blog post offers insights into how SBOMs and vulnerability management can transform your approach to OSS security.

Learn about the role that SBOMs for the security of your organization in this white paper.

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Why do I need SBOMs for OSS vulnerability management?

The TL;DR is SBOMs enabled DevSecOps teams to scale OSS vulnerability management programs in a modern, cloud native environment. Legacy security tools (i.e., SCA platforms) weren’t built to handle the pace of software delivery after a DevOps face lift.

Answering this question in full requires some historical context. Below is a speed-run of how we got to a place where SBOMs became the clear solution for vulnerability management after the rise of DevOps and OSS; the original longform is found on our blog.

If you’re not interested in a history lesson, skip to the next section, “What new use-cases are unlocked with a software dependency inventory?” to get straight to the impact of this evolution on software supply chain security (SSCS).

A short history on software composition analysis (SCA)

• SCAs were originally designed to solve the problem of OSS licensing risk
• Remember that Microsoft made a big fuss about the dangers of OSS at the turn of the millennium
• Vulnerability scanning and management was tacked-on later
• These legacy SCAs worked well enough until DevOps and OSS popularity hit critical mass

How the rise of OSS and DevOps principles broke legacy SCAs

• DevOps and OSS movements hit traction in the 2010s
• Software development and delivery transitioned from major updates with long development times to incremental updates with frequent releases
• Modern engineering organizations are measured and optimized for delivery speed
• Legacy SCAs were designed to scan a golden image once and take as much as needed to do it; upwards of weeks in some cases
• This wasn’t compatible with the DevOps promise and created friction between engineering and security
• This meant not all software could be scanned and much was scanned after release increasing the risk of a security breach

SBOMs as the solution

• SBOMs were introduced as a standardized data structure that comprised a complete list of all software dependencies (OSS or otherwise)
• These lightweight files created a reliable way to scan software for vulnerabilities without the slow performance of scanning the entire application—soup to nuts
• Modern SCAs utilize SBOMs as the foundational layer to power vulnerability scanning in DevSecOps pipelines
• SBOMs + SCAs deliver on the performance of DevOps without compromising security

What is the difference between SBOMs and legacy SCA scanning?

SBOMs offer two functional innovations over the legacy model: 

1. Deeper visibility into an organization’s application inventory and; 
2. A record of changes to applications over-time.

The deeper visibility comes from the fact that modern SCA scanners identify software dependencies recursively and build a complete software dependency tree (both direct and transitive). The record of changes comes from the fact that the OSS ecosystem has begun to standardize the contents of SBOMs to allow interoperability between OSS consumers and producers.

Legacy SCAs typically only scan for direct software dependencies and don’t recursively scan for dependencies of dependencies. Also, legacy SCAs don’t generate standardized scans that can then be used to track changes over time.

What new use-cases are unlocked with an SBOM inventory?

The innovations brought by SBOMs (see above) have unlocked new use-cases that benefit both the software supply chain security niche and the greater DevSecOps world. See the list below:

OSS Dependency Drift Detection

Ideally software dependencies are only injected in source code but the reality is that CI/CD pipelines are leaky and both automated and one-off modifications are made at all stages of development. Plugging 100% of the leaks is a strategy with diminishing returns. Application drift detection is a scalable solution to this challenge.

SBOMs unlocks drift detection by creating a point-in-time record on the composition of an application at each stage of the development process. This creates an auditable record of when software builds are modified; how they are changed and who changed it. 

Software Supply Chain Attack Detection

Not all dependency injections are performed by benevolent 1st-party developers. Malicious threat actors who gain access to your organization’s DevSecOps pipeline or the pipeline of one of your OSS suppliers can inject malicious code into your applications.

An SBOM inventory creates the historical record that can identify anomalous behavior and catch these security breaches before organizational damage is done. This is a particularly important strategy for dealing with advanced persistent threats (APTs) that are expert at infiltration and stealth. For a real-world example, see our blog on the recent XZ supply chain attack.

OSS Licensing Risk Management

OSS licenses are currently undergoing the beginning of a new transformation. The highly permissive licenses that came into fashion over the last 20 years are proving to be unsustainable. As prominent open source startups amend their licenses (e.g., Hashicorp, Elastic, Redis, etc.), organizations need to evaluate these changes and how it impacts their OSS supply chain strategy.

Similar to the benefits during a security incident, an SBOM inventory acts as the source of truth for OSS licensing risk. As licenses are amended, an organization can quickly evaluate their risk by querying their inventory and identifying who their “critical” OSS suppliers are. 

Domain Expertise Risk Management

Another emerging use-case of software dependency inventories is the management of domain expertise of developers in your organization. A comprehensive inventory of software dependencies allows organization’s to map critical software to individual employee’s domain knowledge. This creates a measurement of how well resourced your engineering organization is and who owns the knowledge that could impact business operations.

While losing an employee with a particular set of skills might not have the same urgency as a security incident, over time this gap can create instability. An SBOM inventory allows organizations to maintain a list of critical OSS suppliers and get ahead of any structural risks in their organization.

What are the benefits of a software dependency inventory?

SBOM inventories create a number of benefits for tangential domains, such as, software supply chain security, risk management, etc. but there is one big benefit for the core practices of software development.

Reduced engineering and QA time for debugging

A software dependency inventory stores metadata about applications and their OSS dependencies over-time in a centralized repository. This datastore is a simple and efficient way to search and answer critical questions about the state of an organization’s software development pipeline.

Previously, engineering and QA teams had to manually search codebases and commits in order to determine the source of a rogue dependency being added to an application. A software dependency inventory combines a centralized repository of SBOMs with an intuitive search interface. Now, these time consuming investigations can be accomplished in minutes versus hours.

What are the benefits of scanning SBOMs for vulnerabilities?

There are a number of security benefits that can be achieved by integrating SBOMs and vulnerability scanning. We’ve highlighted the most important below:

Reduce risk by scaling vulnerability scanning for complete coverage

One of the side effects of transitioning to DevOps practices was that legacy SCAs couldn’t keep up with the software output of modern engineering orgs. This meant that not all applications were scanned before being deployed to production—a risky security practice!

Modern SCAs solved this problem by scanning SBOMs rather than applications or codebases. These lightweight SBOM scans are so efficient that they can keep up with the pace of DevOps output. Scanning 100% of applications reduces risk by preventing unscanned software from being deployed into vulnerable environments.

Prevent delays in software delivery

Overall organizational productivity can be increased by adopting modern, SBOM-powered SCAs that allow organizations to shift security left. When vulnerabilities are uncovered during application design, developers can make informed decisions about the OSS dependencies that they choose. 

This prevents the situation where engineering creates a new application or feature but right before it is deployed into production the security team scans the dependencies and finds a critical vulnerability. These last minute security scans can delay a release and create frustration across the organization. Scanning early and often prevents this productivity drain from occurring at the worst possible time.

Reduced financial risk during a security incident

The faster a security incident is resolved the less risk that an organization is exposed to. The primary metric that organizations track is called mean-time-to-recovery (MTTR). SBOM inventories are utilized to significantly reduce this metric and improve incident outcomes.

An application inventory with full details on the software dependencies is a prerequisite for rapid security response in the event of an incident. A single SQL query to an SBOM inventory will return a list of all applications that have exploitable dependencies installed. Recent examples include Log4j and XZ. This prevents the need for manual scanning of codebases or production containers. This is the difference between a zero-day incident lasting a few hours versus weeks.

Reduce hours spent on compliance with automation

Compliance certifications are powerful growth levers for organizations; they open up new market opportunities. The downside is that they create a lot of work for organizations. Manually confirming that each compliance control is met and providing evidence for the compliance officer to review discourages organizations from pursuing these certifications.

Providing automated vulnerability scans from DevSecOps pipelines that integrate SBOM inventories and vulnerability scanners significantly reduces the hours needed to generate and collect evidence for compliance audits.

How impactful are these benefits?

Many modern enterprises are adopting SBOM-powered SCAs and reaping the benefits outlined above. The quantifiable benefits to any organization are unique to that enterprise but anecdotal evidence is still helpful when weighing how to prioritize a software supply chain security initiative, like the adoption of an SBOM-powered SCA against other organizational priorities.

As a leading SBOM-powered SCA, Anchore has helped numerous organizations achieve the benefits of this evolution in the software industry. To get an estimate of what your organization can expect, see the case studies below:

NVIDIA

• Reduced time to production by scanning SBOMs instead of full applications
• Scaled vulnerability scanning and management program to 100% coverage across 1000s of containerized applications and 100,000s of containers

Read the full NVIDIA case study here >>

Infoblox

• 75% reduction in engineering hours spent performing manual vulnerability detection
• 55% reduction in hours allocated to retroactive remediation of vulnerabilities
• 60% reduction in hours spent on manual compliance discovery and documentation

Read the full Infoblox case study here >>

DreamFactory

• 75% reduction in engineering hours spent on vulnerability management and compliance
• 70% faster production deployments with automated vulnerability scanning and management

Read the full DreamFactory case study here >>

Next Steps

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of the power of integrating an SBOM inventory into OSS vulnerability management. This “one-two” combo has unlocked novel use-cases, numerous benefits and measurable results for modern enterprises.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Anchore can help your organization achieve similar results, reach out to our team.

Learn the container security best practices to reduce the risk of software supply chain attacks.

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Open source software has revolutionized the way developers build applications, offering a treasure trove of pre-built software “legos” that dramatically boost productivity and accelerate innovation. By leveraging the collective expertise of a global community, developers can create complex, feature-rich applications in a fraction of the time it would take to build everything from scratch. However, this incredible power comes with a significant caveat: the open source model introduces risk.

Organizations inherit both the good and bad parts of the OSS source code they don’t own. This double-edged sword of open source software necessitates a careful balance between harnessing its productivity benefits and managing the risks. A comprehensive OSS security program is the industry standard best practice for managing the risk of open source software within an organization’s software supply chain.

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What is open source software security?

Open source software security is the ecosystem of security tools (some of it being OSS!) that have developed to compensate for the inherent risk of OSS development. The security of the OSS environment was founded on the idea that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. The reality of OSS is that the majority of it is written and maintained by single contributors. The percentage of open source software that passes the qualifier of “enough eyeballs” is miniscule.

Does that mean open source software isn’t secure? Fortunately, no. The OSS community still produces secure software but an entire ecosystem of tools ensure that this is verified—not only trusted implicitly.

What is the difference between closed source and open source software security?

The primary difference between open source software security and closed source software security is how much control you have over the source code. Open source code is public and can have many contributors that are not employees of your organization while proprietary source code is written exclusively by employees of your organization. The threat models required to manage risk for each of these software development methods are informed by these differences.

Due to the fact that open source software is publicly accessible and can be contributed to by a diverse, often anonymous community, its threat model must account for the possibility of malicious code contributions, unintentional vulnerabilities introduced by inexperienced developers, and potential exploitation of disclosed vulnerabilities before patches are applied. This model emphasizes continuous monitoring, rigorous code review processes, and active community engagement to mitigate risks. 

In contrast, proprietary software’s threat model centers around insider threats, such as disgruntled employees or lapses in secure coding practices, and focuses heavily on internal access controls, security audits, and maintaining strict development protocols. 

The need for external threat intelligence is also greater in OSS, as the public nature of the code makes it a target for attackers seeking to exploit weaknesses, while proprietary software relies on obscurity and controlled access as a first line of defense against potential breaches.

What are the risks of using open source software?

1. Vulnerability exploitation of your application
   • The bargain that is struck when utilizing OSS is your organization gives up significant amounts of control of the quality of the software. When you use OSS you inherit both good AND bad (read: insecure) code. Any known or latent vulnerabilities in the software become your problem.
2. Access to source code increases the risk of vulnerabilities being discovered by threat actors
   • OSS development is unique in that both the defenders and the attackers have direct access to the source code. This gives the threat actors a leg up. They don’t have to break through perimeter defenses before they get access to source code that they can then analyze for vulnerabilities.
3. Increased maintenance costs for DevSecOps function
   • Adopting OSS into an engineering organization is another function that requires management. Data has to be collected about the OSS that is embedded in your applications. That data has to be stored and made available in case of the event of a security incident. These maintenance costs are typically incurred by the DevOps and Security teams.
4. OSS license legal exposure
   • OSS licenses are mostly permissive for use within commercial applications but a non-trivial subset are not, or worse they are highly adversarial when used by a commercial enterprise. Organizations that don’t manage this risk increase the potential for legal action to be taken against them.

How serious are the risks associated with the use of open source software?

Current estimates are that 70-90% of modern applications are composed of open source software. This means that only 10-30% of applications developed by organizations are written by developers employed by the organization. Without having significant visibility into the security of OSS, organization’s are handing over the keys to the castle to the community and hoping for the best.

Not only is OSS a significant footprint in modern application composition but its growth is accelerating. This means the associated risks are growing just as fast. This is part of the reason we see an acceleration in the frequency of software supply chain attacks. Organizations that aren’t addressing these realities are getting caught on their back foot when zero-days are announced like the recent XZ utils backdoor.

Why are SBOMs important to open source software security?

Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) serve as the foundation of software supply chain security by providing a comprehensive “ingredient list” of all components within an application. This transparency is crucial in today’s software landscape, where modern applications are a complex web of mostly open source software dependencies that can harbor hidden vulnerabilities. 

SBOMs enable organizations to quickly identify and respond to security threats, as demonstrated during incidents like Log4Shell, where companies with centralized SBOM repositories were able to locate vulnerable components in hours rather than days. By offering a clear view of an application’s composition, SBOMs form the bedrock upon which other software supply chain security measures can be effectively built and validated.

The importance of SBOMs in open source software security cannot be overstated. Open source projects often involve numerous contributors and dependencies, making it challenging to maintain a clear picture of all components and their potential vulnerabilities. By implementing SBOMs, organizations can proactively manage risks associated with open source software, ensure regulatory compliance, and build trust with customers and partners. 

SBOMs enable quick responses to newly discovered vulnerabilities, facilitate automated vulnerability management, and support higher-level security abstractions like cryptographically signed images or source code. In essence, SBOMs provide the critical knowledge needed to navigate the complex world of open source dependencies by enabling us to channel our inner GI Joe—”knowing is half the battle” in software supply chain security.

Best practices for securing open source software?

Open source software has become an integral part of modern development practices, offering numerous benefits such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and community-driven innovation. However, with these advantages come unique security challenges. To mitigate risks and ensure the safety of your open source components, consider implementing the following best practices:

1. Model Security Scans as Unit Tests

Re-branding security checks as another type of unit test helps developers orient to DevSecOps principles. This approach helps developers re-imagine security as an integral part of their workflow rather than a separate, post-development concern. By modeling security checks as unit tests, you can:

• Catch vulnerabilities earlier in the development process
• Reduce the time between vulnerability detection and remediation
• Empower developers to take ownership of security issues
• Create a more seamless integration between development and security teams

Remember, the goal is to make security an integral part of the development process, not a bottleneck. By treating security checks as unit tests, you can achieve a balance between rapid development and robust security practices.

2. Review Code Quality

Assessing the quality of open source code is crucial for identifying potential vulnerabilities and ensuring overall software reliability. Consider the following steps:

• Conduct thorough code reviews, either manually or using automated tools
• Look for adherence to coding standards and best practices
• Look for projects developed with secure-by-default principles
• Evaluate the overall architecture and design patterns used

Remember, high-quality code is generally more secure and easier to maintain.

3. Assess Overall Project Health

A vibrant, active community and committed maintainers are crucial indicators of a well-maintained open source project. When evaluating a project’s health and security:

• Examine community involvement:
  • Check the number of contributors and frequency of contributions
  • Review the project’s popularity metrics (e.g., GitHub stars, forks, watchers)
  • Assess the quality and frequency of discussions in forums or mailing lists
• Evaluate maintainer(s) commitment:
  • Check the frequency of commits, releases, and security updates
  • Check for active engagement between maintainers and contributors
  • Review the time taken to address reported bugs and vulnerabilities
  • Look for a clear roadmap or future development plans

4. Maintain a Software Dependency Inventory

Keeping track of your open source dependencies is crucial for managing security risks. To create and maintain an effective inventory:

• Use tools like Syft or Anchore SBOM to automatically scan your application source code for OSS dependencies
  • Include both direct and transitive dependencies in your scans
• Generate a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) from the dependency scan
  • Your dependency scanner should also do this for you
• Store your SBOMs in a central location that can be searched and analyzed
• Scan your entire DevSecOps pipeline regularly (ideally every build and deploy)

An up-to-date inventory allows for quicker responses to newly discovered vulnerabilities.

5. Implement Vulnerability Scanning

Regular vulnerability scanning helps identify known security issues in your open source components. To effectively scan for vulnerabilities:

• Use tools like Grype or Anchore Secure to automatically scan your SBOMs for vulnerabilities
• Automate vulnerability scanning tools directly into your CI/CD pipeline
  • At minimum implement vulnerability scanning as containers are built
  • Ideally scan container registries, container orchestrators and even each time a new dependency is added during design
• Set up alerts for newly discovered vulnerabilities in your dependencies
• Establish a process for addressing identified vulnerabilities promptly

6. Implement Version Control Best Practices

Version control practices are crucial for securing all DevSecOps pipelines that utilize open source software:

• Implement branch protection rules to prevent unauthorized changes
• Require code reviews and approvals before merging changes
• Use signed commits to verify the authenticity of contributions

By implementing these best practices, you can significantly enhance the security of your software development pipeline and reduce the risk intrinsic to open source software. By doing this you will be able to have your cake (productivity boost of OSS) and eat it too (without the inherent risk).

How do I integrate open source software security into my development process?

DIY a comprehensive OSS security system

We’ve written about the steps to build a OSS security system from scratch in a previous blog post—below is the TL;DR:

• Integrate dependency scanning, SBOM generation and vulnerability scanning into your DevSecOps pipeline
• Implement a data pipeline to manage the influx of security metadata
• Use automated policy-as-code “security tests” to provide rapid feedback to developers
• Automate remediation recommendations to reduce cognitive load on developers

Outsource OSS security to a turnkey vendor

Modern software composition analysis (SCA) tools, like Anchore Enterprise, are purpose built to provide you with a comprehensive OSS security system out-of-the-box. All of the same features of DIY but without the hassle of building while maintaining your current manual process.

• Anchore SBOM: comprehensive dependency scanning, SBOM generation and management
• Anchore Secure: vulnerability scanning and management
• Anchore Enforce: automated security enforcement and compliance

Whether you want to scale an understaffed security to increase their reach across your organization or free your team up to focus on different priorities, the buy versus build opportunity cost is a straightforward decision.

Next Steps

Hopefully, you now have a strong understanding of the risks associated with adopting open source software. If you’re looking to continue your exploration into the intricacies of software supply chain security, Anchore has a catalog of deep dive content on our website. If you’d prefer to get your hands dirty, we also offer a 15-day free trial of Anchore Enterprise.

Learn about the role that SBOMs for the security of your organization in this white paper.

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