Microsoft, Google, Red Hat and IBM join forces to improve the security of open source software – Explica

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is a new organization founded by GitHub, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, GitLab, HackerOne, and Red Hat, among others. Its goal is to unite initiatives to promote open source software security and accelerate collaboration between industries in one place.

At least thats how the official website of this new project within the Linux Foundation explains it, which has among its members some of the largest technology companies in the world, some that also leverage large-scale open source projects in their commercial productssuch as Microsoft (owner of GitHub), IBM (owner of Red Hat) and Google.

This foundation seeks to be a massive collaboration between software giants to improve response to vulnerabilities in open source software. In fact, Microsoft itself (recently a lover of open source) says it will move many of its resources to this initiative to help identify security threats, establish best practices, develop tools and improve the disclosure of vulnerabilities.

They hope that their vulnerability disclosure system will help developers fix problems with their open source software in minutes instead of months.

This last point is especially interesting given that at the OpenSSF they will collaborate with companies like Google, whose group of cybersecurity specialists (Project Zero) constantly collides with Microsoft for revealing vulnerabilities of the company before they have been able to fix them.

OpenSSF was established on the premise that there is a need for a mechanism for security researchers to collaborate in securing the open source supply chain, and that those researchers in different organizations have common interests and concerns. OpenSSF will seek to facilitate dialogues between these organizations.

Jim Zemlin, the CEO of the Linux Foundation explained it like this:

We believe that open source is a public good and in all industries we have a responsibility to unite to improve and support the security of open source software on which we all depend. Ensuring open source security is one of the most important things we can do and it requires everyone around the world to collaborate with the effort. OpenSSF will provide a forum for a truly collaborative effort across industries.

Other founding members of OpenSSF also include ElevenPaths, Okta, Purdue, SAFECode, StackHawk, Trail of Bits, JPMorgan Chase, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation, Uber, and VMware.

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Microsoft, Google, Red Hat and IBM join forces to improve the security of open source software - Explica