Is open source software bad for business?

Davey Winder
Monday, 21 July 2008 17:47

Business IT - Open Source

Not following enterprise-level change control standards is a big and costly problem for business. Jennifer Bayuk, an independent security consultant and former CISO of Bear Stearns, reckons that there is a "hidden cost for the enterprise" in using open source because businesses will have to "test and patch for security bugs they don't anticipate."

The final word, though, must go to the founder and CTO of Fortify Software, Roger Thornton, who insists that "in order to mitigate the business risk created by insecure applications, it is imperative that companies adopt a process that allows them to assess, remediate and prevent security vulnerabilities in all of their business software, whatever the source." Which sounds like pretty sensible advice to me...