Log4Shell, open source maintenance, and why SBOMs are critical now

If you were one of the thousands of technology professionals who lost nights, weekends, or part of your holiday break to the Log4Shell vulnerability, you might be asking yourself, “What could we have done differently to protect ourselves better and make remediation easier?

While the Log4Shell vulnerability was one of the most pernicious open source vulnerabilities of the last decade, it’s not all bad news. The lessons learned from Log4Shell provide a great learning moment for anyone building applications with open source software. Looking beyond Log4Shell into the future, how can we ensure our organizations are better prepared for the next vulnerability of this scale?

Tidelift CEO and co-founder Donald Fischer and guest speaker Forrester Principal Analyst Sandy Carielli discussed some of the key lessons organizations can learn from Log4Shell along with some critical recommendations organizations can use to prepare for handling similar issues down the road.

Sandy and Donald talked about how enterprise organizations should:

• Use software bills of materials to better understand and manage their open source software supply chain
• Enhance their visibility of the open source components being used and the associated transitive dependencies
• Focus on proactive open source maintenance and how to better prepare their teams to quickly mitigate the risk of future vulnerabilities
• Consider the role open source maintainers play in risk planning and mitigation