Improving The Security Of Open Source Software

Open Source Software has changed the IT world and its popularity grows together with a growing tech-savvy population and a massive increasing number of free, open-source projects. Developing and deploying open-source software is not just an idyllic idea, those projects are  shaping a modern, fast-changing digital world.

Unfortunately, Open Source projects are a favourite target for ransomware and to date attackers are known to have targeted GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket accounts, wiping code from multiple repositories, planting malware and leaving behind only a ransom note.

The Open Source Services Market Is Growing

The open-source services market, estimated at $21,7 billion in 2021, is on course to more than double within five years and, according to a new report from MarketsandMarkets’, it will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.2%, to reach USD 50.0 billion by 2026. 

But there is the other side of the coin here because, once people handle and process more code and switch to open source more than ever before, it does present compatibility issues, inherent vulnerabilities, the threat of cyber attacks and a wide range of possible human mistakes.

That is why cyber security service providers are helping to ensure that open-source software is protected, secure and kept up to date.

Source Code Backup To Protect Open Source Projects

One of those companies is Xopero Software with GitProtect.io project, which ensures Open Source software with free source code backup and Disaster Recovery. It guarantees professional, fully automated, and manageable GitHub backup of public repositories and metadata for all open-source platforms that want to protect their source code.

GitProtect.io is based on a company flagship backup product that now brings its all professional, enterprise-class features to GitHub (as well as GitLab and Bitbucket) users making GitProtect.io the most professional GitHub backup software, now free for open sources.

“Open source projects adhere to a cooperative, community-led philosophy that we absolutely admire... It gave software development freedom, offering enterprises greater control over data and allowing developers to easily integrate the software into their IT environment and workflows. We want to contribute and make open-source projects protected, recoverable, and hence, more safe and accessible" says Piotr Biegun at GitProtect.io.

Source code, even if hosted within such companies like GitHub, GitLab, or Atlassian, might get lost or unavailable. No service provider can ensure customers with 100% availability.

In June 2020 GitHub experienced a major outage that lasted for hours and impacted millions of developers while  earlier this year millions of IoT devices were found to be at risk from BotenaGo malware that had been uploaded to GitHub.

Finally, human errors, the greatest cyber security threat. Head over-write, branch or old repository deletion, losing or not having a local copy - that’s some of the developers’ mistakes that can put source code in danger or wipe it out irreversibly.

GitHub Backup

GitProtect.io is a must-have for any responsible and software-oriented organisation and Open Source Projects. It ensures users with both repository and metadata backup, unlimited retention and repository archive possibilities, a data-driven central management console, and disaster recovery features. It’s compatible with nearly every storage (cloud and local) so there is no need to invest in an additional IT infrastructure.

Developing and deploying software is not just efficient and flexible, it is also accessible and better  protected. Moreover, contrary to scripts, backup software is easy to test and ensure it works to make sure companies can recover the source code in any event of failure.

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