As the fallout from the Apache Log4J vulnerabilities earlier this year shows, the biggest risks in enterprise software today are not necessarily with insecure code written directly by in-house software development teams. The flaws of the components, libraries and other open-source code that makes up the bulk of today’s software code bases are the underwater part of the insecurity iceberg.
The truth is that so much of the enterprise software and custom applications produced by DevOps teams and software engineering groups is not actually coded by their developers. Modern software today is modular. Developers use what is called a microservices architecture to make new applications by constructing them a lot like a Lego house—using blocks that are made of premade code. Rather than reinventing the wheel every time they need their application to perform a common function, developers root around in their proverbial box of blocks to find just the right one that will do what they need without a lot of fuss.