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Riverside Research, a defense technology nonprofit focusing on intelligence, announced on October 1 a collaboration with Kitware, Inc., a custom software and AI developer, to develop capabilities that enable organizations to securely and reliably deploy software patches and updates for fielded software inventories.
Riverside Research, a defense technology nonprofit focusing on intelligence, announced a collaboration with Kitware, Inc., a custom software and AI developer, to develop capabilities that enable organizations to securely and reliably deploy software patches and updates for fielded software inventories.
Modern software products often incorporate hundreds or thousands of third-party software components, creating complex dependency networks that can make vulnerability remediation exceptionally challenging. In many cases, updating a critical software component is comparable to replacing a faulty engine part while a vehicle is traveling at highway speeds, requiring precision, reliability, and minimal disruption to ongoing operations.
One of the world’s most widely used software build tools, CMake, manages software inventories by defining software components and their dependencies. Through this collaboration, Riverside Research and Kitware enhanced CMake with native software inventory capabilities that embed critical metadata directly within those inventories.
Riverside Research has developed tools that enable fielded system maintainers to leverage this embedded metadata, improving their ability to identify, update, and repair software systems while maintaining operational continuity.
This contrasts with existing approaches to software inventory management, which rely on external scanning tools, self-reporting practices, or a combination of the two. Depending on external tools or providers introduces potential ambiguities and limits coverage.
“Software developers have long relied on CMake as the authoritative source for defining how applications are built and how their dependencies fit together,” said Bill Hoffman, co-founder of Kitware and lead architect of CMake. “By integrating software inventory generation directly into the build system, we’re making that same trusted information available for security, maintenance, and risk management activities. Our collaboration with Riverside Research helps ensure organizations can understand and maintain increasingly complex software ecosystems with greater accuracy, confidence, and efficiency.”
Riverside Research and Kitware’s integration of software inventory generation directly into CMake allows organizations across government and industry to more accurately track their cyber risk, reducing the likelihood and impact of crippling attacks on the nation’s software supply chain, a known national security risk that the federal government continually mitigates.
“CMake’s adoption of software inventories marks a significant step toward improving software security and visibility for millions of C++ developers,” said Dr. Gordon Stewart, associate director of secure and resilient systems at Riverside Research. “We are excited by this partnership with Kitware and look forward to the further impact of E-BOSS technologies.”
Source: Riverside Research
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