Jetstack unveils industry-first software supply chain security toolkit

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Jetstack, a Venafi company and specialist in cloud native, open source and strategic consulting services, has announced the availability of an easy-to-use, interactive and comprehensive toolkit for securing modern software supply chains.

The visual, web-based resource is available to everyone and is designed to help organisations evaluate and plan the crucial steps they need to tackle effective software supply chain security. Software supply chain security has become an increasingly critical issue for all organisations. After the attack against Solar Winds at the end of 2020 that affected more than 1,800 companies, software supply chain attacks increased over 300% in 2021.

Matthew Bates, CTO for Jetstack, said: “Most organisations now understand the urgency and importance of improving the security of the software they consume and produce.

“The problem is that it’s very challenging to identify and prioritise the changes that need to be made whilst also managing the competing priorities of their development and security communities. It’s very difficult to figure out how to continually improve development velocity and reduce time to deployment while, at the same time, improve control, visibility and security, Our toolkit helps development and security teams quickly figure out where to start by identifying the difficulty and impact connected to specific security controls.”

The Software Supply Chain toolkit consolidates advice and recommendations from multiple frameworks and whitepapers that each provide comprehensive guidance for software supply chain security including:

● CNCF ‘Software Supply Chain Best Practices’ whitepaper
● The Linux Foundation SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts)
● NIST Guidance on Executive Order 14028 Improving Software Supply Chain Security
● Venafi blueprint for building secure software development pipelines

The interactive toolkit presents the guidance from these frameworks broken down into four key areas: build pipelines, source code, provenance and deployment. Recommendations from each section include insights on priority and complexity along with links to the original open source toolsets that can help with that specific recommendation.

Steve Judd, senior solutions architect for Jetstack and the developer of the toolkit, said: “Software supply chain attacks target a whole range of vulnerabilities at different points in the software life cycle.

“Solving these challenges requires going through a whole range of controls that go well beyond a software bill of materials (SBOMs), which is just one of the 54 recommendations. The Software Supply Chain toolkit is a new type of collaboration with the open source community designed to help the industry develop proactive and preventative solutions that are purpose built for existing and emerging development processes.”

Tags: Jetstack, Security