White House Meeting Explores Ways to Secure Software Supply Chain

As organizations deal with the critical Log4j vulnerability, discussions continue in regard to the overall security of open source software. Most recently, a high-profile White House meeting, attended by leaders from Apache, Google, IBM, GitHub, Amazon, among others, explored ways to mitigate future security issues.

The meeting focused on three main topics:

  • Preventing security vulnerabilities in code and open source packages
  • Improving the process for finding and fixing defects 
  • Reducing response time for distributing and implementing fixes 

According to the official meeting readout, participants discussed how to make it easier for developers to write secure code, how to prioritize and maintain the most important open source projects, and how to accelerate and improve the use of Software Bills of Material (SBOMs).

Kent Walker, President Global Affairs & Chief Legal Officer Google & Alphabet, cited the need to identify a list of critical open source projects “to help prioritize and allocate resources for the most essential security assessments and improvements.” 

The path forward will require collaboration from companies and organizations that consume and ship open source software, said Joe Brockmeier, Vice President Marketing & Publicity at Apache Software Foundation. “There's no single "silver bullet" to get there, and it will take all of our organizations working together to improve the open source supply chain.” 

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