Pain Points Open source software management does not have to be difficult. Just as with health, a preventive care approach can help strengthen the program overall and avoid emergencies. Revenera’s senior director of product management, Alex Rybak, offers software companies questions to answer in order to assess the program’s health. How do you rate your pain on a scale from 0 to 10?
Chances are, a medical professional has asked that question in a health check scenario. For an acute issue that lands you in the emergency room, there’s a good chance that you’re rating a sharp or throbbing pain up around seven or higher. If you’re seeking treatment for a sore throat at your primary care physician’s office, it might just be a dull ache or two. If you have no pain at all to report during a preventive care visit, zero.
Numerous software companies can respond to a similar pain scale regarding the potential pain of managing an open source software (OSS) program. When a vulnerability is discovered, your team probably experiences shooting pains, especially if you are trying to figure out where and whether you are affected. But the process of software composition analysis (SCA) is about preventing disruption—essentially easing the discomfort of tracking and maintaining all of the components used in your software, mitigating risks and exposures presented by OSS and third-party components, and remediating discovered issues as painlessly as possible.
Your physician aims for zero pain. Your open source management efforts should aim for the lowest score possible. Here are a few ways SCA can help streamline your programs and ease common maladies.
Software Composition Analysis as Preventive Care
Everything about SCA is about prevention: heading off vulnerabilities and security risks, managing license compliance, averting disruption to your software development life cycle (SDLC), and protecting the business’s ability to sell innovative products. The need for SCA has only grown in recent years, particularly in light of the developing US guidelines around securing the software supply chain.
