An Overview of Open Source Security
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It took a long time for open source software in general, and open source security software in particular, to start catching on with businesses. Attitudes in the corporate world have been changing, however. This article gives you some background on the topic and a tour of what's out there.
Until recently, the idea of using open source software in the enterprise was a non-starter. Executives and decision makers traditionally took a suspicious view of anything they didn’t have to pay for, assuming that if it wasn’t expensive it had to be of poor quality. While this attitude served them well in conventional business dealings, it betrayed how little they understood the process of software development.
It took a combination of events to cause things to change: a seemingly endless series of high profile security issues involving Microsoft products; the preference for open source software – typified by Linux -- among the people who knew the most about such things; the unprecedented growth of the almost entirely open source-based Internet; the increasing availability of open source "killer apps;" and not least, the improving integration between open source and commercial solutions, meaning that what used to be an either-or decision has became progressively less clear cut. Today, the situation has progressed to the point where just about every enterprise will have at least some open source solutions within their software portfolio.
However, there is still one area within which there remains a large degree of suspicion towards open source or "free" software: security. While decision makers have been happy to allow networking and even in some cases productivity to be migrated to open source software, they have been markedly less enthusiastic about entrusting the keys of the kingdom to a branch of the industry that still carries an undeserved reputation for quirkiness and unreliability. However, whether they realize it or not, parts of their security setup are almost certainly already based on open source code.
It seems certain that over time the prevalence of open source security solutions will only increase, as the advantages far outweigh the risks. These advantages don’t stop at the reduced cost. Using open source allows organizations to tailor their security systems to match their needs with a high degree of precision, unlike the one-size-fits-all solution provided by commercial development houses. In addition, there are advantages to having access to the source code. Contrary to popular belief this often enhances the quality of a given product, since it is open to scrutiny and modification. Open source developers cannot hide behind obfuscation. And it is far easier to rapidly adapt to changing threats within an open source environment.
Security tools can be broadly broken down into a number of key areas, for each of which a range of open source solutions are available. These areas are vulnerability detection and exploitation, intrusion detection and prevention, scanning, email security tools, and the vast category containing other tools. Obviously in the current highly networked environment there is a degree of crossover between these areas. However, it serves as a useful way of identifying the main purpose of the different tools.
Next: Vulnerability detection and exploitation >>
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