• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

My TechDecisions

  • Best of Tech Decisions
  • Topics
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Mobility
    • Unified Communications
    • IT Infrastructure
    • Network Security
    • Physical Security
    • Facility
    • Compliance
  • RFP Resources
  • Resources
  • Podcasts
  • Subscribe
  • Project of the Week
  • About Us
    SEARCH
Compliance, IT Infrastructure, Network Security, News

What Tech Firms Are Saying About The White House’s Open-Source Security Summit

White House's Open-Source Security Summit renews calls for software code transparency and more support for the open-source community.

January 13, 2022 Zachary Comeau Leave a Comment

White House AI Regulations, ChatGPT, Generative AI
stock.adobe.com

After the Log4j vulnerabilities threw a wrench into the holiday plans of IT and cybersecurity folks last month, the federal government has taken swift action to address the issue, including instructing federal agencies to quickly patch and mitigate the vulnerability and making other resources available to the larger IT community.

Now, the issue has been elevated to the White House, which hosted an open-source software summit on Thursday to discuss the security of open-source software in the wake of the bug that expert say will take months or years to fully remediate.

Leading tech companies including Microsoft, Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Google, Cloudflare, IBM, Linux Open Source Foundation, Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, VMWare, GitHub and the developers and maintainers of Log4j, the Apache Foundation.

CyberScoop, citing a “senior administration official,” reported that the objective of the meeting was to facilitate a discussion to improve the security of open-source software and brainstorm how new collaboration could rapidly drive improvements.

Elevating this issue to the highest levels of government was necessary, as the Log4j vulnerabilities could have an impact on the IT ecosystem and cybersecurity—not to mention national security—for a long time, since the list of software impacted by the flaws continues to grow.

The meeting was not made public before Thursday, so here is how some companies that attended are responding:

Google’s response: create a market place for open-source maintenance

In a blog post, Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, said while open-source code helps facilitate innovation and new technologies, there is no official resource allocation and few standards for maintaining its security. That limited amount of work is generally done by volunteers.

“For too long, the software community has taken comfort in the assumption that open source software is generally secure due to its transparency and the assumption that ‘many eyes’ were watching to detect and resolve problems,” Walker says. “But in fact, while some projects do have many eyes on them, others have few or none at all.”

In addition to raising awareness and contributing resources to protect the open -source movement and better secure it, Google proposed setting up a marketplace for open-source maintenance, “matching volunteers from companies with the critical projects that most need support,” Walker writes.

“Given the importance of digital infrastructure in our lives, it’s time to start thinking of it in the same way we do our physical infrastructure. Open source software is a connective tissue for much of the online world — it deserves the same focus and funding we give to our roads and bridges.”

GitHub’s Response: a collaborative approach

According to Mike Hanley, chief security officer of GitHub, 99% of the world’s software has at least some open source code, so nearly all of the technology people use is due to the hard work of open source developers.

Hanley, who attended the summit, writes in a blog post that any security flaws in open source code “have a global ripple effect across the billions of developers and services that rely on it.”

He cited the Log4j flaw and the SolarWinds supply chain compromise as two glaring examples of the importance of securing critical code.

“We’ve seen how just one or two lines of vulnerable code can have a dramatic impact on the health, safety, and trustworthiness of entire systems in the blink of an eye. And while this is not a new issue, as we saw with Heartbleed, the recent events further underscored two ways the tech industry can come together and help.”

Hanley called for the global tech community to collaboratively secure the software supply chain and better support open-source maintainers to make it easier for them to secure their code.

The Apache Foundation: the entire supply chain 

In a blog post about the summit, The Apache Foundation committed to finding ways to improve security, and that involves everyone that touches open-source software.

“This means that we believe the path forward will require upstream collaboration by the companies and organizations that consume and ship open-source software,” the Foundation writes. “There’s no single “silver bullet” to get there, and it will take all of our organizations working together to improve the open-source supply chain.”

Rezilion: SBOM

While not in attendance at the Summitt, DevSecOps automation company Rezilion—which has released several resources designed to help organizations find and mitigate vulnerable instances of Log4j—released a statement calling for the need to track code through a software bill of materials (SBOM).

CEO Liran Tancman says open-source software is free and accessible, but also poses risk as organizations continue to adopt technology developed with open-source software.

“Through transparency, when a vulnerability like Log4J appears, they can more efficiently detect it and remediate it,” Tancman says. “But you cannot remediate what you can’t see – which is why they are pushing for an effective way for security leaders to be able to provide that transparency. It’s about visibility for quick fixes.”

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!

Tagged With: Cybersecurity, Log4j

Related Content:

  • Barracuda ESG Barracuda: Replace Compromised ESG Appliances Immediately
  • Audinate Dante Professional Services engineer Audinate Launches Dante Professional Services
  • Google, Bard Google: Bard Now 30% Better at Computation-Based Problems
  • Cisco and AT&T Join Forces to Help Businesses Expand Connectivity for a Growing Mobile-First Workforce Cisco and AT&T Join Forces to Expand Connectivity…

Free downloadable guide you may like:

  • Download TechDecisions' Blueprint Series report on Security Awareness now!Blueprint Series: Why Your Security Awareness Program is Probably Falling Short

    Learn about the evolution of phishing attacks and best practices for security awareness programs to ensure your organization is properly prepared to defend against them in this report from TechDecisions' Blueprint Series.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get the FREE Tech Decisions eNewsletter

Sign up Today!

Latest Downloads

Download TechDecisions' Blueprint Series report on Security Awareness now!
Blueprint Series: Why Your Security Awareness Program is Probably Falling Short

Learn about the evolution of phishing attacks and best practices for security awareness programs to ensure your organization is properly prepared t...

Workplace Collaboration Tools for Corporate Spaces
Workplace Collaboration Tools for Corporate Spaces

From lobbies and shared spaces to conference rooms and multipurpose facilities, you need high-performing AV technology to effectively share informa...

ChatGPT, generative AI, enterprise, workplace
Blueprint Series: ChatGPT and Generative AI in the Workplace

This latest release of the TechDecisions Blueprint Series explores the new phenomenon of tools such as ChatGPT and how IT leaders should go about d...

View All Downloads

Would you like your latest project featured on TechDecisions as Project of the Week?

Apply Today!
Sharp Microsoft Collaboration HQ Logo

Learn More About the
Windows Collaboration Display

More from Our Sister Publications

Get the latest news about AV integrators and Security installers from our sister publications:

Commercial IntegratorSecurity Sales

AV-iQ

Footer

TechDecisions

  • Home
  • Welcome to TechDecisions
  • Subscribe to the Newsletter
  • Contact Us
  • Media Solutions & Advertising
  • Comment Guidelines
  • RSS Feeds
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin

Free Technology Guides

FREE Downloadable resources from TechDecisions provide timely insight into the issues that IT, A/V, and Security end-users, managers, and decision makers are facing in commercial, corporate, education, institutional, and other vertical markets

View all Guides
TD Project of the Week

Get your latest project featured on TechDecisions Project of the Week. Submit your work once and it will be eligible for all upcoming weeks.

Enter Today!
Emerald Logo
ABOUTCAREERSAUTHORIZED SERVICE PROVIDERSTERMS OF USEPRIVACY POLICY

© 2023 Emerald X, LLC. All rights reserved.