Open Source Components Fail to Receive Suitable Security Attention
Less than 25 percent of developers test components for vulnerabilities at every release
April 12, 2018

Pete Chestna
CA Veracode

Only 52 percent of developers using commercial or open source components in their applications update those components when a new security vulnerability is announced, according to new research conducted by Vanson Bourne for CA Veracode, part of CA Technologies. This highlights organizations' lack of security awareness and puts organizations at risk of a breach.


Software development processes like DevSecOps have helped improve the security of the code developers write. However, these same development processes value speed and efficiency to keep up with the demands of the application economy. As a result, developers rely on components that borrow features and functionality from existing projects and libraries. The research shows that 83 percent of respondents use either or both commercial and open source components, with an average of 73 components being used per application.

While components boost developers’ efficiency, and their use is considered a best practice, these components come with inherent security risks. Despite finding an average of 71 vulnerabilities per application introduced through the use of third-party components, only 23 percent of respondents reported testing for vulnerabilities in components at every release. This may be a result of only 71 percent of organizations reporting to having a formal application security (AppSec) program in place.

What’s more, only 53 percent of organizations keep an inventory of all components in their applications. According to The State of Software Security Report 2017 (SOSS), fewer than 28 percent of companies conduct regular composition analysis to understand which components are built into their applications.

This report shows that development (44 percent) or security (31 percent) teams are most likely to be responsible for the maintenance of third-party commercial and open source components, which suggests a move towards responsibility for the development team. As awareness around open source risk continues to grow, providing developers with the solutions, education and visibility to mitigate risk becomes a critical component to the Modern Software Factory approach to development that helps to build better, more secure, apps faster.

We know that developers care about creating great code, and that means creating secure code. In order to be successful, developers need to have clarity on the security policy and the tools to measure against it. When the goal is clear and we give developers access to those tools, they are able to integrate scanning earlier into the SDLC and make informed decisions that take security into consideration. Through this, we see a marked improvement in secure software development and the resulting outcomes.

Methodology: CA Veracode commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey 400 application developers from the U.S. (200 respondents), UK (100 respondents), and Germany (100 respondents) to understand the maturity of organizations’ component security. Polling was conducted online in February of 2018.

Pete Chestna is Director of Developer Engagement at CA Veracode
Share this

Industry News

March 20, 2023

To meet the growing demand for Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) with global organizations, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is introducing new capabilities that can boost the reliability and efficiency of large-scale Kubernetes environments while simplifying operations and reducing costs.

March 20, 2023

Perforce Software joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program and listed its free Enhanced Studio Pack (ESP) in AWS Marketplace.

March 20, 2023

Aembit, an identity platform that lets DevOps and Security teams discover, manage, enforce, and audit access between federated workloads, announced its official launch alongside $16.6M in seed financing from cybersecurity specialist investors Ballistic Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures.

March 16, 2023

Hyland released Alfresco Content Services 7.0 – a cloud-native content services platform, optimized for content model flexibility and performance at scale.

March 16, 2023

CAST AI has announced the closing of a $20M investment round.

March 15, 2023

Check Point® Software Technologies introduced Infinity Global Services, an all-encompassing security solution that will empower organizations of all sizes to fortify their systems, from cloud to network to endpoint.

March 15, 2023

OpsCruise's Kubernetes and Cloud Service observability platform is certified to run on the Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes platform.

March 14, 2023

DataOps.live released an update to the DataOps.live platform, delivering productivity for data teams.

March 14, 2023

CoreStack and Zensar announced a strategic global partnership. CoreStack will provide its AI-powered NextGen cloud governance and FinOps capabilities, complementing Zensar’s composable cloud operations offering.

March 14, 2023

Delinea introduced the Delinea Platform, a cloud-native foundation for Delinea's PAM solutions that empowers end-to-end visibility, dynamic privilege controls, and adaptive security.

March 13, 2023

Sysdig announced a new foundation that will serve as the long-term custodian of the Wireshark open source project.

March 13, 2023

Talend announced the latest update to Talend Data Fabric, its end-to-end platform for data discovery, transformation, governance, and sharing.

March 13, 2023

Descope has raised $53M in seed funding and emerged from stealth to launch a frictionless, secure, and developer-friendly authentication and user management platform.

March 09, 2023

Loft Labs announced Loft v3 with new capabilities and flexibility for platform teams to build and enable their development teams with a self-service Kubernetes.

March 09, 2023

AWS Application Composer is now generally available.