Empowering Open Source Security with Scalable Infrastructure

By Mila Zhou

Summary 

How can open source projects maintain secure infrastructure without financial strain? OpenSSF Premier Member, Amazon Web Services (AWS) addresses this by providing critical funding and scalable compute resources. Through initiatives like the AWS Open Source Promotional Credit Program, maintainers access enterprise-grade security tools and automated testing, ensuring the global software supply chain remains resilient, hardened, and efficient for everyone.

Why Does Open Source Security Need Infrastructure Investment?

Securing open source software requires more than writing good code. It takes serious compute power to run continuous integration pipelines, fuzzing engines, and secure artifact distribution networks. Infrastructure costs can quickly become a bottleneck for maintainers.

As a founding and Premier Member of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), AWS is a key contributor to the security of the open source ecosystem. We actively collaborate across OpenSSF working groups and the governing board to help build security standards from which everyone benefits.

Beyond large-scale funding to open source and collaborative standards, AWS also offers practical, day-to-day support for maintainers through the AWS Open Source Credit Program. While this is an independent AWS initiative rather than an OpenSSF program, it directly addresses the infrastructure constraints that open source security researchers and tool creators face.

How Can Projects Solve the Infrastructure Bottleneck?

Security testing should never be limited by a fixed pool of servers. When projects want to run extensive static analysis (SAST) jobs or continuous performance testing, they need scalable compute. Furthermore, projects that distribute plugins or security tools need a highly available delivery mechanism to protect the integrity of the software supply chain.