Open source has developed a reputation in the IT world. While many companies are now adopting open source security, there still remain industry myths about whether or not this is a viable solution that most enterprise environments can easily implement and use while maintaining the level of security traditional solutions offer.
Find out what you should and shouldn’t believe about open source security with these top 5 myths and truths, and get the real story about how source security can work for your organization.
Myth 1: Open source requires a steep learning curve
Truth: The truth is, the best open source firms have made configuring and maintaining a secure policy easy with usable, point-and-click management. These solutions can integrate completely with an organization’s existing infrastructure and can be implemented quickly with no security or programming expertise required.
Myth 2: Open source isn't complete and reliable
Truth: Since open source firms don’t have excessive licensing fees, the value must focus, and even rely on consistent, reliable and effective support. And since security is a process, not an end product, the value Open Source brings to service corresponds especially well with security. When combined successfully with experience, open source provides the best, cost-effective method of maintaining security that is completely scaleable to your organization and needs, in order to ensure customers, data and applications are protected from attack.
Myth 3: Open source security solutions aren't as mature as other solutions.
Truth: In the past 5 years, open source firms have made tremendous strides in the level of development, and commercial solutions are now completely mature and fully stable, including managed services and support. Yet, the true measure of stability and reliability is performance year after year, on platforms and applications that can adapt to changing conditions. In many cases, open source deployments provide the adaptability so necessary to evolve to new and increasing threats.
Myth 4: Open source firms are not suitable for enterprise environments
Truth: Unlike years ago, open source firms are now used in many Fortune 500 companies, making strides in developing secure applications for huge, scalable environments. Businesses and organization of all sizes around the world are realizing now, more than ever, the value open source can bring to their security operations, and the peace of mind open source security can give companies in maintaining customer privacy, network integrity and application security.
Myth 5: Adapting to new threats is slower than the alternatives.
Truth: In fact, it’s just the opposite – there’s no security through obscurity. The code is more open and more adaptable to needed changes, and patches are often released faster than alternatives.
Security is a process of integrating and maintaining applications for reliably controlling access to information. By being secure and scalable to multiple environments, Open Source offers organizations a cost-effective way to successfully combine applications to ensure that digital resources remain secure.
Open source security is no longer a myth – it’s a very real and viable solution for crafting effective, comprehensive security policies that are today being used in some of the world’s largest business environments.
