Press Release

Free training opportunities, new member investments, consolidation with Core Infrastructure Initiative and new opportunities for anyone to contribute accelerate work on open source security

 

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oct 29, 2020 – OpenSSF, a cross-industry collaboration to secure the open source ecosystem, today announced free training for developing secure software, a new OpenSSF professional certificate program called Secure Software Development Fundamentals and additional program and technical initiatives. It is also announcing new contributors to the Foundation and newly elected advisory council and governing board members.

Open source software has become pervasive across industries, and ensuring its security is of primary importance. The OpenSSF, hosted at the Linux Foundation, provides a structured forum for a collaborative, cross-industry effort. The foundation is committed to working both upstream and with existing communities to advance open source security for all.

Open Source Security Training and Education

OpenSSF has developed a set of three free courses on how to develop secure software on the non-profit edX learning platform. These courses are intended for software developers (including DevOps professionals, software engineers, and web application developers) and others interested in learning how to develop secure software. The courses are specifically designed to teach professionals how to develop secure software while reducing damage and increasing the speed of the response when a vulnerability is found.

The OpenSSF training program includes a Professional Certificate program, Secure Software Development Fundamentals, which can allow individuals to demonstrate they’ve mastered this material. Public enrollment for the courses and certificate is open now. Course content and the Professional Certificate program tests will become available on November 5.

“The OpenSSF has already demonstrated incredible momentum which underscores the increasing priorities placed on open source security,” said Mike Dolan, Senior VP and GM of Projects at The Linux Foundation. “We’re excited to offer the Secure Software Development Fundamentals professional certificate program to support an informed talent pool about open source security best practices.”

New Member Investments

Sixteen new contributors have joined as members of OpenSSF since earlier this year: Arduino; AuriStor; Canonical; Debricked; Facebook; Huawei Technologies; iExec Blockchain Tech; Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH); Open Source Technology Improvement Fund; Polyverse Corporation; Renesas; Samsung; Spectral; SUSE; Tencent; Uber; and WhiteSource. For more information on founding and new members, please visit: https://openssf.org/about/members/

Core Infrastructure Initiative Projects Integrate with OpenSSF

The OpenSSF is also bringing together existing projects from the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), including the CII Census (a quantitative analysis to identify critical OSS projects) and CII FOSS Contributor Survey (a quantitative survey of FOSS developers). Both will become part of the OpenSSF Securing Critical Projects working group. These two efforts will continue to be implemented by the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH). The CII Best Practices badge project is also being transitioned into the OpenSSF.

OpenSSF Leadership

The OpenSSF has elected Kay Williams from Microsoft as Governing Board Chair. Newly elected Governing Board members include:

• Jeffrey Eric Altman, AuriStor, Inc.;
• Lech Sandecki, Canonical;
• Anand Pashupathy, Intel Corporation; and
• Dan Lorenc from Google as Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) representative.

An election for a Security Community Individual Representative to the Governing Board is currently underway and results will be announced by OpenSSF in November. Ryan Haning from Microsoft has been elected Chair of the Technical Advisory Council (TAC).

There will be an OpenSSF Town Hall on Monday, November 9, 2020, 10:00a -12:00p PT, to share updates and celebrate accomplishments during the first three months of the project.  Attendees will hear from our Governing Board, Technical Advisory Council and Working Group leads, have an opportunity for Q+A and learn more about how to get involved in the project. Register here.

Membership is not required to participate in the OpenSSF. For more information and to learn how to get involved, including information about participating in working groups and advisory forums, please visit https://openssf.org/getinvolved.

 

New Member Comments

Arduino

“As an open-source company, Arduino always considered security as a top priority for us and for our community,” said Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder. ’”We are excited to join the Open Source Security Foundation and we look forward to collaborating with other members to improve the security of any open-source ecosystem.”

AuriStor

“One of the strengths of the open protocols and open source software ecosystems is the extensive reuse of code and APIs which expands the spread of security vulnerabilities across software product boundaries.  Tracking the impacted downstream software projects is a time-consuming and expensive process often reaching into the tens of thousands of U.S. dollars.  In Pixar’s Ratatouille, Auguste Gusteau was famous for his belief that “anyone can cook”.  The same is true for software: “anyone can code” but the vast majority of software developers have neither the resources or incentives to prioritize security-first development practices nor to trace and notify impact downstream projects.  AuriStor joins the OSSF to voice the importance of providing resources to the independent developers responsible for so many critical software components.” – Jeffrey Altman, Founder and CEO or AuriStor.

Canonical Group

“It is our collective responsibility to constantly improve the security of open source ecosystem, and we’re excited to join the Open Source Security Foundation,” said Lech Sandecki, Security Product Manager at Canonical. “As publishers of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, we deliver up to 10 years of security maintenance to millions of Ubuntu users worldwide. By sharing our knowledge and experience with the OSFF community, together, we can make the whole open source more secure.”

Debricked

“The essence of open source is collaboration, and we strongly believe that the OSSF initiative will improve open source security at large. With all of the members bringing something different to the table we can create a diverse community where knowledge, experience and best practices can help shape this space to the better. Debricked has a strong background in research and extensive insight in tooling; knowledge which we hope will be a valuable contribution to the working groups,” said Daniel Wisenhoff, CEO and co-founder of Debricked.

Huawei

“With open source software becoming a crucial foundation in today’s world, how to ensure its security is the responsibility of every stakeholder. We believe the establishment of the Open Source Security Foundation will drive common understanding and best practices on the security of the open source supply chain and will benefit the whole industry,” said Peixin Hou, Chief Expert on Open System and Software, Huawei. “We look forward to making contributions to this collaboration and working with everybody in an open manner. This reaffirms Huawei’s long-standing commitment to make a better, connected and more secure and intelligent world.”

Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard

“We are excited to bring the Core Infrastructure Initiative’s research on the prevalence and current practices of open source into this broader network of industry and foundation partners,” said Frank Nagle, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and Co-Director of the Core Infrastructure Initiative at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. “Only through coordinated, strategically targeted efforts – among competitors and collaborators alike – can we effectively address the challenges facing open source today.”

Open Source Technology Improvement Fund

“OSTIF is thrilled to collaborate with industry leaders and apply it’s methodology and broad expertise for securing open-source technology on a larger scale. The level of engagement across organizations and industries is inspiring, and we look forward to participating via the Securing Critical Projects Working Group,” said Chief Operating Officer Amir Montazery. “Linux Foundation and OpenSSF have been instrumental in aligning efforts towards improving open-source software, and OSTIF is grateful to be involved in the process.”

Polyverse

“Polyverse is honored to be a member of OpenSSF. The popularity of open source as the ‘go-to’ option for mission critical data, systems and solutions has brought with it increased cyberattacks. Bringing together organizations to work on this problem collaboratively is exactly what open source is all about and we’re eager to accelerate progress in this area,” said Archis Gore, CTO, Polyverse.

Renesas

“Renesas provides embedded processors for various application segments, including automotive, industrial automation, and IoT. Renesas is committed to ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data while mitigating cybersecurity risks. To enable our customers to develop robust systems, it is essential to provide root-of-trust of the open source software that runs on our products,” said Shinichi Yoshioka, Senior Vice President and CTO of Renesas. “We are excited to join the Open Source Security Foundation and to collaborate with industry-leading security professionals to advance more secure computing environments for the society.”

Samsung

“Samsung is trying to provide best-in-class security with our technologies and activities. Not only are security risks reviewed and removed in all development phases of our products, but they are also monitored continuously and patched quickly,” said Yong Ho Hwang, Corporate Vice President and Head of Samsung Research Security Team, Samsung Electronics. “Open source is one of the best approaches to drive cross-industry effort in responding quickly and transparently to security threats. Samsung will continue to be a leader in providing high-level security by actively contributing and collaborating with the Open Source Security Foundation.”

Spectral

“Spectral’s mission is to enable developers to build and ship software at scale without worry. We feel that the OpenSSF initiative is the perfect venue to discuss and improve open source security and is a natural platform that empowers developers. The Spectral team is happy to participate in the working groups and share their expertise in security analysis and research of technology stacks at scale, developer experience (DX) and tooling, open source codebases analysis and trends, developer behavioral analysis, though the ultimate goal of improving open source security and developer happiness,” said Dotan Nahum, CEO and co-founder of Spectral.

SUSE

“At SUSE, we power innovation in data centers, cars, phones, satellites and other devices. It has never been more critical to deliver trustworthy security from the core all the way to the edge,” said Markus Noga, VP Solutions Technology at SUSE. “We are committed to OpenSSF as the forum for the open source community to collaborate on vulnerability disclosures, security tooling, and to create best practices to keep all users of open source solutions safe.”

Tencent

“Tencent believes in the power of open source technology and collaboration to deliver incredible solutions to today’s challenges. As open source has become the de facto way to build software, its security has become a critical component for building and maintaining the software and infrastructure,” said Mark Shan, Chair of Tencent Open Source Alliance and Board Chair of the TARS Foundation. “By bringing different organizations together, OpenSSF provides a platform where developers can collaboratively build solutions needed to protect the open source security supply chain. Tencent is very excited to join this collaborative effort as an OpenSSF member and contribute to its open source security initiatives and best practices.

WhiteSource

“In today’s world, software development teams simply cannot develop software at today’s pace without using open source. Our goal has always been to empower teams to harness the power of open source easily and securely. We’re honored to get the opportunity to join the Open Source Security Foundation where we can join forces with others to contribute, together, towards open source security best practices and initiatives.” David Habusha, VP Product.

About the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF)

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the OpenSSF (launched in August 2020) is a cross-industry organization that brings together the industry’s most important open source security initiatives and the individuals and companies that support them. It combines the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), founded in response to the 2014 Heartbleed bug, and the Open Source Security Coalition, founded by the GitHub Security Lab to build a community to support the open source security for decades to come. The OpenSSF is committed to collaboration and working both upstream and with existing communities to advance open source security for all.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page:  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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Story Changes Culture
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New collaboration called Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) consolidates industry efforts to improve the security of open source software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Aug 3, 2020 – The Linux Foundation, today announced the formation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). The OpenSSF is a cross-industry collaboration that brings together leaders to improve the security of open source software (OSS) by building a broader community with targeted initiatives and best practices. It combines efforts from the Core Infrastructure Initiative, GitHub’s Open Source Security Coalition and other open source security work from founding governing board members GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation and Red Hat, among others. Additional founding members include ElevenPaths, GitLab, HackerOne, Intel, Okta, Purdue, SAFECode, StackHawk, Trail of Bits, Uber and VMware.

Open source software has become pervasive in data centers, consumer devices and services, representing its value among technologists and businesses alike. Because of its development process, open source that ultimately reaches end users has a chain of contributors and dependencies. It is important that those responsible for their user or organization’s security are able to understand and verify the security of this dependency chain.

The OpenSSF brings together the industry’s most important open source security initiatives and the individuals and companies that support them. The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), founded in response to the 2014 Heartbleed bug, and the Open Source Security Coalition, founded by the GitHub Security Lab, are just a couple of the projects that will be brought together under the new OpenSSF. The Foundation’s governance, technical community and its decisions will be transparent, and any specifications and projects developed will be vendor agnostic. The OpenSSF is committed to collaboration and working both upstream and with existing communities to advance open source security for all.

“We believe open source is a public good and across every industry we have a responsibility to come together to improve and support the security of open source software we all depend on,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “Ensuring open source security is one of the most important things we can do, and it requires all of us around the world to assist in the effort. The OpenSSF will provide that forum for a truly collaborative, cross-industry effort.”

With the formalization of the group, the open governance structure is established and includes a Governing Board (GB), a Technical Advisory Council (TAC) and a separate oversight for each working group and project. OpenSSF intends to host a variety of open source technical initiatives to support security for the world’s most critical open source software, all of which will be done in the open on GitHub.

For more information and to contribute to the project, please visit https://openssf.org

Resources

Threats, Risks & Mitigations of the Open Source Ecosystem, Open Source Security Coalition
Vulnerabilities in the Core, Harvard’s Lab for Innovation Science and Linux Foundation
Red Hat Product Security Risk Report, Red Hat

Governing Board Member Quotes

GitHub
“Every industry is using open source software, and it is our collective responsibility to help maintain a healthy and secure ecosystem,” said Jamie Cool, Vice President of Product Management, Security at GitHub. “GitHub founded the Open Source Security Coalition in 2019 to bring together industry leaders around this mission and ensure the consumption of open source software is something that all developers can do with confidence. We look forward to this next step in the evolution of the coalition and serving as a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation.”

Read more in GitHub’s blog.

Google
“Security is always top of mind for Google and our users. We have developed robust internal security tools and systems for consuming open source software internally, for our users, and for our OSS-based products. We believe in building safer products for everyone with far-reaching impacts, and we are excited to work with the broader community through the OpenSSF. We look forward to sharing our innovations and working together to improve the security of open source software we all depend on,” said Director of Product Security, Google Cloud, James Higgins.

IBM
“Open source has become mainstream in the enterprise. As such, the security of the open source supply-chain is of paramount importance to IBM and our clients,” said Christopher Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO Open Technology. “The launch of the Open Source Security Foundation marks an important step towards giving open source communities the information and tools they need to improve their secure engineering practices, and the information developers need to choose their open source wisely.”

JPMorgan Chase
“Developing, growing and using open source software is a top priority for JPMorgan Chase. We are committed to partner with the community through the Open Source Security Foundation to ensure trust and security in open source software for everyone,” stated Lori Beer, Global Chief Information Officer, JPMorgan Chase.

Microsoft
“As open source is now core to nearly every company’s technology strategy, securing open source software is an essential part of securing the supply chain for every company, including our own,” said Mark Russinovich, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Azure. “As with everything open source, building better security is a community-driven process. All of us at Microsoft are excited to be a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation and we look forward to partnering with the community to create new security solutions that will help us all.”

Read more in Microsoft’s blog.

NCC Group
“The security and privacy of the internet is essential for the protection of individuals, organizations and critical infrastructure, and also the future of democracy and our civil liberties. Given the fundamental role open source plays in powering our world, creating scalable resources and tools to help software maintainers, developers, and users understand and improve their projects’ security is a significant step toward a safer and more secure world. By bringing together a dedicated group of technologists with a shared desire to improve the security of open source software, together we can begin to remediate – or even prevent – security vulnerabilities at a scale not previously possible,” stated Jennifer Fernick, Head of Research at global cyber security expert NCC Group.”

OWASP
“Joining the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation is central to our mission to advance the state of application security, especially as OpenSSF is already aligned with OWASP’s core philosophies of openness, transparency and innovation,” said Andrew van der Stock, Executive Director of OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project. “We look forward to working with all of the participating organizations to improve the state of software security and work together on projects of vital interest to software developers, organizations, and governments around the world.”

Red Hat
“Red Hat is unrelenting in our commitment to open source and in participating to make upstream projects successful. We believe security is an essential part of healthy project communities,” said Chris Wright, CTO of Red Hat. “Now, more than ever, is the time for us to join together with other leaders to help ensure key projects are secure and consumable in our products, across enterprises, and as part of the hybrid cloud. We are excited to help found this Open Source Software Foundation.”

Additional Founding Member Quotes

ElevenPaths
“The security of an enterprise application or services depends mainly on the security of all its components. The vast majority of business applications and services are not fully developed in-house as they make use of open source components that help accelerate the development cycle and extend their functionality. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that all open source components comply with the best practices of secure development and periodic reviews are carried out to positively impact all software that makes use of these components. Joining the Open Source Security Foundation is fully aligned with our vision and principles.”

GitLab
“GitLab is excited to play a part in the creation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) to further cross-industry collaboration and move the security of open source projects forward as it is key to the future of technology,” said David DeSanto, director of product for Secure and Defend at GitLab. “Aligning with GitLab’s mission of ‘everyone can contribute,’ we look forward to supporting and contributing to the community to bring together security-conscious developers to change open source development in a collaborative and fundamental way.”

HackerOne
“Open source software powers HackerOne,” said Reed Loden, Head of Open Source Security, HackerOne. “It powers our software, our infrastructure, and our model for engaging with our community. As part of our mission to make the internet safer, we want to make it easier for open source projects to remain secure. For over three years, we’ve given the open source community our platform for free, and we’ve been long-time supporters of initiatives like Internet Bug Bounty. Joining the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation allows us to continue on our mission and make the internet safer alongside some of the foremost visionaries in security. We look forward to seeing the change we can make together.”

Intel
“It takes the industry working together to advance technology and accelerate open source security initiatives. Hardware and software are inextricably linked to deliver security, transparency and trust in open source software. Together with the OpenSSF, Intel will continue to play a key role in mobilizing the industry at large and solving security challenges from the cloud to the edge,” said Anand Pashupathy, GM of System Security Software, Intel.

SAFECode
“Open source software is a major component in today’s software supply chain and thus comprises a significant fraction of the software that individuals and organizations rely upon. Supporting the secure development of open source software is of critical importance to SAFECode members and the software community,” said Steve Lipner, executive director of SAFECode. “We are looking forward to bringing our software security experience to bear as we participate in the Open Source Security Foundation’s mission to build a collaborative, cross-industry community to support the security of open source software.”

StackHawk
“The use of open source has undoubtedly reached critical mass, with ever increasing dependency trees and software complexity. Equipping engineering teams to deliver secure applications simply and scalably is core to our mission at StackHawk. We are excited to be one of the founding members of the Open Source Security Foundation to ensure that this can be a reality across software development as a whole and look forward to continued partnership with the community,” said StackHawk’s Founder & CEO, Joni Klippert.

Uber
“Security and Privacy is always top of mind at Uber to ensure we are responsible stewards of our user’s data. We’re always focused on mitigating all types of software vulnerabilities and as such the security of open source software is a top priority. Historically, we’ve worked with other industry leaders to help build a strong security community around open source software and we are excited to expand those efforts with the OpenSSF,” said Rob Fletcher, Sr Manager, Security Engineering.

VMware
“Strengthening the security posture, policies, and processes in the open source community and in widely used open source projects is strengthening the whole software ecosystem – for all players,” said Joshua Lock, security tech lead, Open Source Technology Center, VMware. “VMware strongly supports the goal of making our software ecosystem more resilient and more secure.”

About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer
reTHINKit Media
503-867-2304
jennifer@rethinkitmedia.com