Developed through collaboration between the two organisations, the CIS Software Supply Chain Security Guide provides more than 100 foundational recommendations that can be applied across a variety of commonly used technologies and platforms.

In addition, Aqua Security unveiled a new open source tool, Chain-Bench, which is the first and only tool for auditing the software supply chain to ensure compliance with the new CIS guidelines.

Although threats to the software supply chain continue to increase, studies show that security across development environments remains low. The new guidelines establish general best practices that support key emerging standards like Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA) and The Update Framework (TUF) while adding foundational recommendations for setting and auditing configurations on the Benchmark-supported platforms.

Within the guide, recommendations span five categories of the software supply chain, including Source Code, Build Pipelines, Dependencies, Artifacts and Deployment.

CIS intends to expand this guidance into more specific CIS Benchmarks to create consistent security recommendations across platforms. As with all CIS guidance, the guide will be published and reviewed globally. Feedback will help ensure that future platform-specific guidance is accurate and relevant.

"By publishing the CIS Software Supply Chain Security Guide, CIS and Aqua Security hope to build a vibrant community interested in developing the platform-specific Benchmark guidance to come," said CIS benchmarks development team manager Phil White.

"Any subject matter experts who develop or work with the technologies and platforms that make up the software supply chain are encouraged to join the effort in building out additional benchmarks. Their expertise will be valuable to establishing critical best practices to advance software supply chain security for all."

To date, the guide has been reviewed by experts at CIS, Aqua Security, Axonius, PayPal, CyberArk, Red Hat, and other leading technology firms.

Axonius cyber security product manager Ofir Shapira said "The work Aqua is doing around software supply chain security, not only as a company but for the wider community, is paving the way for more secure software releases."

Erez Dasa, a cyber and application security architect at a leading digital payment organisation said "Implementing these guidelines over development processes gives us much more confidence in the security of releases."

To support organisations adopting the CIS guidance, Aqua released Chain-Bench. Chain-Bench scans the DevOps stack from source code to deployment and simplifies compliance with security regulations, standards, and internal policies to ensure teams can consistently implement software security controls and best practices.

"Building software at scale requires strong governance of the software supply chain, and strong governance requires effective tools. This is where we saw an opportunity to add value," said Aqua Security director of Argon technology Eylam Milner.

"We wanted to leverage our expertise in software supply chain security to help build critical guidance for one of industry's most pressing challenges, as well as a free, accessible tool to help other organisations adhere to it. The work doesn't stop here. We will continue working with CIS to refine this guidance, so that organisations worldwide can benefit from stronger security practices."

To learn more about the CIS Software Supply Chain Security Guide, visit the CIS Workbench. To download Chain-Bench, visit GitHub.

About Center for Internet Security

The Center for Internet Security makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses, and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation. We are a community-driven nonprofit, responsible for the CIS Critical Security Controls and CIS Benchmarks, globally recognised best practices for securing IT systems and data. We lead a global community of IT professionals to continuously evolve these standards and provide products and services to proactively safeguard against emerging threats. Our CIS Hardened Images® provide secure, on- demand, scalable computing environments in the cloud. CIS is home to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), the trusted resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for US state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities, and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), which supports the rapidly changing cybersecurity needs of US election offices. To learn more, visit CISecurity.org or follow us on Twitter: @CISecurity.

About Aqua Security

Aqua Security stops cloud native attacks. As the pioneer and largest pure-play cloud native security company, Aqua helps customers unlock innovation and build the future of their business. The Aqua Platform is the industry's most integrated Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) securing the entire application lifecycle through prevention, detection and response. Founded in 2015, Aqua is headquartered in Boston, MA and Ramat Gan, IL with Fortune 1000 customers in over 40 countries. For more information, visit www.aquasec.com.