BANGALORE, INDIA: The debate on the usage of open source technologies in security products is growing day-by-day. When most of the companies are using open source security products, a few companies are still evaluating to use open source applications to protect their IT products.

In an interaction with Abhigna NG of CIOL, Rahul Kopikar, Head - Business Development of Seclore, shared his view on the adoption of open source products by enterprises and the best practices what developers need to follow while developing open source applications. Excerpts:

CIOL: How safe is it to use open source applications with the increase in malware attacks?

Rahul Kopikar: It is pretty safe as long as the software has gone through stringent QC and testing. The notion that open source is prone to malware attacks is wrong. On the contrary, proprietary software are more prone to malware attacks because it goes to limited testing, whereas in open source software the whole worldwide community contributes and tests the system.

CIOL: What are the key benefits of using open source software in building security applications/software?

RK: According to me, cost is the major factor on choosing open source software. Other benefits include:

 a. Open source has a huge community contributing to the project as a result of which the maturity of the software is high.

 b. Number of bugs is very low because the whole worldwide community with the smartest people are testing it. Because of this, if any bug is detected, a patch for it is released instantly.

 c. Also, it reduces ground up development and re-inventing the wheel.

CIOL: According to you, what are the biggest challenges in protecting information at the enterprise level?

RK: The biggest challenge is "awareness and education". Users need to be made aware that the information that they are handling is of confidential and sensitive nature and hence needs to be handled with care. If awareness and education is done then the job is half done already!

CIOL: What's your take on the adoption of open source in the enterprise? Do you think it will give a boost to security?

RK: Adoption of open source in enterprise depends on the size of the enterprise and the risk appetite of the organization. Though open source solutions offer a lot of benefits, they fare very poorly when it comes to support for the solution. There is very little to zero support for open source solutions.

Large enterprises are reluctant to deploy open source technologies because there is no support and there are not enough success stories. However, the percolation of open source technologies is high and growing in SMB enterprises where the risk appetite is higher.

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