Open source software is deeply embedded in enterprises today: from the Linux kernel to data center infrastructure, and from databases to application servers and front ends. The importance of securing the supply chain has become front and center in the industry, with the US government's involvement and the formation of industry bodies such as OpenSSF to work on solutions.

We know that we must secure the open source software we use — it's also important that open source be an integral part of the solutions that we create. Proprietary solutions alone are not enough to counter the threat to the ever-expanding areas of vulnerability. To properly secure our software dependencies in depth, solutions must interoperate tightly with key open source infrastructure such as the Linux kernel and Kubernetes.

Through our experience with creating the Falco runtime threat detection tool, and contributing it as open source to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), we've learned valuable lessons about how important it is to provide open source solutions for security.

1. Collaborative development goes broad and deep.

Security is a never-ending battle against expanding attacks and attack surfaces. Through collaboration, we are able to bring together more expertise, apply more scrutiny, and cover a broader range of use cases than through proprietary development. Nobody can be an expert on everything, but many people can come together to contribute their singular deep expertise into an open source project.

While Falco's core competency specializes in monitoring Linux syscalls, the team strategically added a plug-in interface. Through this, other infrastructure can be secured, from Kubernetes admission controllers to cloud services such as AWS CloudTrail or Okta. The open nature of the project means that experts in particular platforms — whether open or proprietary — can contribute their know-how and help the entire user base. Proprietary approaches can't reach this same level of scale.

Moreover, you don't need to ask anyone's permission to extend open source to cover a new service or platform: If what you need isn't there, and you're able to contribute, you can ensure that your needs will be covered in the future.

2. Standards-based development promotes choice.

When open source software is part of a multivendor body such as the CNCF and in widespread use, adopters can reasonably view it as being a de facto standard. Using open source standards provides an interoperable framework in which an ecosystem of tools, support, and training exist. As a user, you always have the freedom to control your own solution by directly using the open source, or choosing commercial tools that interoperate.

Drawing from Falco as an example, multiple vendors such as Sysdig, Red Hat, and Sumo Logic have built their own solutions based on the codebase. At their core, they are aligned on the protocols that Falco uses for event capture, meaning users get choice, a richer ecosystem of tools that use the standards, and future optionality.

3. Open source is transparent.

Open source gives you the full visibility to examine exactly how a piece of software works. This transparency brings a double benefit.

First, if you're trusting every node in your systems with a tool, you want assurance about its security. Even if you're not auditing the code yourself, you benefit from many contributors with the resources to find and fix vulnerabilities. For software that has achieved widespread adoption, these contributors likely include cloud-scale operators with deep expertise.

Second, open source brings you insight and possibly influence on the direction of the software. You can become a contributor and influence technical direction, or allocate funding towards supporting its sustained development. When that software lives inside an industry foundation, you may benefit from established standards in governance, auditing, and sustainability.

4. Modern platforms are built on open source.

To provide the assurance users need, security should be considered as an integral factor of any platform, not an optional extra. Open source is the engine room of the modern software stack, and therefore security solutions must also reach into the open source foundations. The cloud-native era has driven new approaches to operations and architecture, and security is no exception. Following the desire to "shift left" and incorporate security earlier in the software development life cycle, the same benefits apply to doing that with the open source foundations that run our enterprise platforms.

Conclusion

Open source is the only approach with the agility and broad reach to set up the conditions to meet modern security concerns. Users depending on massive open source infrastructure — the basis of today's clouds — should be careful of any security solution that does not acknowledge and leverage open source itself.

When we depend on an open commons as our computing foundation, we need it to be secure, and the most effective way to do that is through open solutions.

About the Author

Edd Wilder-James' career spans open standards, open source, and data analytics, in roles covering technology, content, business, and strategy. At Sysdig, his team is committed to growing Falco as the standard for runtime threat detection. Previously, Edd led teams working on open source programs at Google, working with TensorFlow, Kubeflow, Go, and Kubernetes. He has over two decades in the open source world, chairing OSCON for six years, and is a former Debian and GNOME contributor.