Over the past quarter of a century, the open-source movement has gone from strength to strength. But that success and the openness inherent in the community have led to a major challenge – security. The more software that is developed, the greater the likelihood there is for vulnerabilities.
To make matters worse, the open-source world prides itself on openness and transparency. Therefore, any security vulnerabilities are disclosed publicly. In this age of organized gangs of cybercriminals, that is like placing an ad asking for an attack.
This has given rise to a large number of open source security tools. They take care of all aspects of the management of security in open source components, examine dependencies, fix bugs in code, and lower risk.
However, the tools themselves vary considerably in scope, sophistication, and function. The editors of eSecurity Planet find the following 20 open source security tools to be particularly useful. Some are open-source, some are commercial, but all are good security options for open source environments.