Cracking the OSS Code: Streamlined Vulnerability Scanning and Hardening with RapidFort

Written by
Mehran Farimani
Published on
January 26, 2024

Modern software environments pose substantial risks to organizations. Approximately 50-90% of all software in today’s production environments goes unused, mainly because of the way modern applications are built and packaged. These unused components not only present a continuous maintenance burden, but they also generate lots of noise and make it extremely difficult to identify and prioritize risks in the application’s execution path. Not to mention, they become a tool chest that hackers can exploit to live off the land undetected or access sensitive data, if infiltrated.   

Much of the risky, unused code stems from open-source software (OSS,) which composes 70%–90% of software in modern applications and constitutes the majority of an organization’s software attack surface. OSS is provided “as is,” so security teams must manage their risk differently than in-house or vendor software.  

How do organizations protect themselves today?

While there are several OSS vulnerabilities that security teams must assess and address continuously, their resources are limited. Regularly updating open-source components ensures that known vulnerabilities are patched promptly. However patching is costly, requiring full test and release cycles, and moving to newer versions of packages frequently causes breaking changes to software, which entails continuous involvement from development teams. 

As a result, organizations are leveraging scanning solutions, like SCA and image scanners, to find and report vulnerabilities within their OSS and infrastructure. However, these scans provide an unwieldy number of vulnerabilities, and more importantly, they do not provide enough insights for effective prioritization. 

Security teams must go through and prioritize these vulnerabilities, identifying any critical or high-severity issues that need to be addressed. This can be done with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) ranking, but security, development, and operations leaders are left to decide whether fixes are possible, reasonable, or cost-effective.

Arm yourself with the deepest scan on the market – for less

Wouldn’t it be great if vulnerability scanning was the easiest part of your job? All hope is not lost. Our vulnerability scanner will help you see exactly what’s running in your execution path, scanning from the registry level all the way to the component level execution path. Here’s what you’ll get: 

Flexible setup

Scan container images from the command line, and seamlessly integrate the scanner with your CI/CD pipeline to automate scanning at any stage of the software development life cycle.

SBOMs at your fingertips

Our scanner performs deep package analysis, providing you with a detailed Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) on every one of your components. Download all results in flat files or JSON reports.  

Accuracy that cuts through the noise

Enter a single command line command to run a scan and gain clear insights without the distraction of false positives or false negatives.

Discover vulnerabilities in your open-source code

RapidFort identifies vulnerabilities in your container and references the most accurate databases to identify patches available to you.

The RapidFort Solution: A better, faster way to secure your software

Why stop at scanning? Our comprehensive Software Attack Surface Management (SASM) platform enables organizations to scan their software infrastructure, gain a deep understanding of their software attack surface, and automatically “lock out” unused code. 

The result? A 50%-90% reduction in vulnerabilities – maintained automatically and continuously.

Security teams can use our flexible and powerful toolset to manage and remediate vulnerabilities in unused components without wasting developers’ time – a task that would otherwise require months of patching with highly technical, costly developers. It can also be used by developers while they build new software, automatically hardening and securing code as they go.

Ready to see it for yourself? Book a demo with the RapidFort team today.

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