Security is complicated. This is why open development is a key factor and a precondition for creating secure solutions. Security is getting more important every day. Also due to the development of machine learning applications many data driven solutions are poisoned with privacy related data.
When development happens in the open, you can directly verify if a vendor is actively pursuing security and privacy and watch how it treats issues. The ability to study the process followed, the source code developed makes that anyone can perform an independent audit. Not only on code, but also on processes used!
So beside code, open development means that an open process is followed. A process where you can see and check whether mandatory baselines and principles are used.
To increase and improve security and protect our privacy open source solutions are more and more seen as a very good solution. Within more and more companies worldwide we notice a trend towards adopting open source solutions for security and privacy protection. Governments worldwide cannot depend and trust on closed source software for their security infrastructure anymore. Gartner predicts that by 2016 99% of Global 2000 enterprises will use open source in mission-critical software. So open source solutions for controlling security and privacy are slowly but steady becoming the new de facto standard.
As many security experts already known:
However there is still a lot of resistance against using open source for business use, especially when it comes down to security and privacy functionality. This chapter covers facts and demystifies fads regarding open source security and privacy products.
When discussing the use of open source products for security and privacy services two important question appear:
Why should open source be used for security functionality?
How can the quality of open source products for security and privacy be determined and judged?
FOSS quality is a very popular field for PhD students and analyst companies. However we think that technical experience of practical business use along with deep technical knowledge is required in order to give good advice for a company.
Some core benefits for using FOSS software for security are:
Higher quality software
Ability to safely leverage open source tech
Better security
From a Security by Design perspective, FOSS aligns naturally with several foundational tenets:
Verifiability – You can audit the exact software running in production.
Independence – Freedom from single-vendor lock-in reduces strategic risk.
Rapid community response – Mature FOSS projects often receive security patches more quickly than proprietary equivalents once issues are disclosed.
Customisability – Security controls can be tailored precisely to the threat model without waiting for a vendor roadmap.
However, openness alone does not guarantee security. Quality matters above all. A poorly maintained or overly complex open-source component can introduce more risk than a well-engineered closed-source alternative. The principle of “prefer open” must therefore be tempered by two practical considerations:
Proven quality and active maintenance – Choose projects with established track records, regular releases, strong governance (e.g., Apache, CNCF, or Linux Foundation projects), comprehensive test coverage, and responsive security disclosure processes.
Simplicity and manageability – The most secure solution is often the simplest one that meets requirements. An overly complex FOSS stack that cannot be fully understood, monitored, or updated by the operational team undermines the very goals of Security by Design. Where two options offer comparable security, the one that is easier to manage, patch, and reason about should be selected—even if it means rejecting a more feature-rich open-source alternative.