The presentation with a simple diagram that combines this data with an sbom to yield "information" gives me navel gazing vibes of UML being the future of coding.
Just as architecture didn't equate to well designed and maintainable software, I fear this initiative won't fix horribly outdated and vulnerable deployments. Software life cycle, deprecation, abandonment, supply chains are mostly a process problem, standards and technology won't fix that.
In other words it doesn't force you to add an SBOM + EOX checker step to your CI pipeline. But if your compliance auditor wants you to check your dependencies, adding such a standardized step makes it easier to satisfy the auditor.
Rarely have I found that compliance to the goals was an issue in themselves. Or that making changes to tick a checkbox correlated to material improvements.
That is to say that if this leads to more efficiency and makes it easier for compliance audits and such, I fear is stream lining the least impactful part of its goals.
I am confused when I hear people say stuff like this. I guess if you turn on a tool and never look at it again, it won't result in material improvements. But complying with regulations or a particular compliance regime should _absolutely_ result in at least _some_ material improvement to your security posture. Like you can implement segregation of duties just as a checkbox, or use the requirement to revisit the way you gate changes to production, as just one example.
If it's already outstanding, you spend a lot of time revalidating what you already know and it's often a noisy process with many false positives.
If it's in a horrible state, however, the regulation often leaves a lot of wiggle room where you do some work to achieve, say, PCI compliance and then spend a lot of time arguing why this and that don't apply in your specific case.
So admitted, the is probably some improvement in the latter case but it's hardly proportional.
So IMHO, it doesn't help those of good will & expertise and does too little for the negligent. It adds noise and in the end quality still depends on factors other than compliance and certification.
I am very much hoping the effort succeeds, but I am also mindful of the fact that the site to which I have linked is more successful by virtue of having better coverage.
Every organization or committee that designs a logo should be legally required to have at least one teenager on the board to prevent accidental goatse or other inadvertent blunders.
feldrim•7mo ago
rollcat•7mo ago
"Oh, just write plain C". Which compiler do you mean? GCC? LLVM/clang? On top of what OS/kernel? What firmware? Etc.
Arnavion•7mo ago