Open source software is a critical component of modern applications, but it also introduces security risks that must be managed effectively. For Software Engineering and Information Security Managers, balancing vulnerability remediation with development speed can be challenging, especially when adopting new security tools. While the initial learning curve may seem steep, refining software development processes over time to integrate application security best practices can significantly improve efficiency. Here’s how to manage open source vulnerabilities without slowing your team down.

Overcoming the Initial Learning Curve

When first implementing an open source security tool, teams often face an overwhelming number of alerts. This “initial cliff” can create friction between security and development teams. To ease this transition:

1. Start with a Baseline Assessment: Identify critical vulnerabilities first rather than trying to fix everything at once.
2. Engage with Development Teams Early: Work collaboratively to integrate security into existing workflows.
3. Use Automation Where Possible: Set up automated scans and alerts to streamline identification and response efforts.

Prioritizing Issues Effectively

Not all vulnerabilities require immediate attention. Efficient prioritization ensures that teams focus on the most critical risks first. Here are some practices you can follow to prioritize known issues and keep your team focused on resolving the highest potential impact issues to your business:

1. View by CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures): Having the ability to view issues by the related known vulnerability is useful for tracking specific, high-risk vulnerabilities.
2. View by Package with Grouped Issues: Helps identify dependencies that introduce multiple vulnerabilities, allowing for batch fixes. Tools like Application Security Posture Management platforms should not only give you the ability to group issues by the impacted dependency, but also automatically update so when issues are first identified and then fixed, you don’t have to create and then close separate tickets for the same issue. SOOS automatically creates tickets and removes redundancies by grouping issues by the vulnerable dependency.
3. Leverage Multi-Org Views: If managing multiple teams or business units, ensure your security posture covers all areas so you can effectively prioritize resources across teams and streamline remediation.

Creating Long-Term Efficiencies

Once you’ve started regularly scanning your applications, have discovered the issues in the initial cliff, and have resolved most of not all of them, it’s time to fine-tune your application security processes to prevent bottlenecks and optimize your development velocity. Follow these practices to ensure security is well integrated and teams are prepared to manage issues when they’re easiest to resolve:

1. Integrate Security into CI/CD Pipelines: Automated checks in the development lifecycle reduce last-minute disruptions. Make sure you select an application security tool and setup processes that provide unlimited scanning, so your developers don’t have to think about when to scan software, they simply do it at every point in their workflow that makes sense for your team, from while they’re coding, live within the IDE, to before every commit.
2. Set Risk-Based Policies: Define thresholds for acceptable risk, ensuring teams don’t waste time on low-severity issues or spend time thinking about which issues need to be resolved immediately.
3. Regularly Review and Adjust Scanning Frequency, Business Rules, Issue Management Workflows, and More: Periodic audits help optimize security processes and remove unnecessary friction.

Conclusion: Balancing Essential Business Needs

Managing open source vulnerabilities efficiently requires striking a balance between security and speed. Both are important and could affect the other if given too much weight. By automating security processes using business policies and configurable settings, tailoring prioritization to accelerate time to remediation for key issues while deprioritizing unimportant work, and prioritizing tools that seamlessly integrate with developer and compliance workflows, Software Engineering and Information Security Managers can protect software without disrupting development velocity. 
Over time, what once seemed like a major hurdle becomes a manageable part of the software development lifecycle, giving teams confidence the work they’re doing will save them time and avoid future disruptions. Try SOOS for free to see how integrated software security can help your team today.