Protection of Source Code – do we need back – up from GitHub and Bitbucket?

Now the software is the world’s driving force, and creators are changing games. The true revolution unfolds before our eyes, with almost 40 million people worldwide engaged in creating code or programs. And the need for software engineers and their source code is growing with thousands of companies worldwide.

The majority of the data handled every day are therefore generated by developers, startups and software firms. And to highlight the magnitude – now, the data is more driving the digital economy than ever before compared with Oil in the 18th century. It was 100 GB produced per day in 1992, in 97′-100 GB per hour and today it reaches the number of 50 000 GB per… second.

How much is it worth the Oil of the 21st Century?

Source code is one of the most valuable company assets as intellectual property. As far as software development businesses and startups are concerned – this is a significant element of assessing a company. It is no surprise that companies are increasingly spending on cybersecurity and data protection. However, one area is not to be underestimated by software development firms. The source code itself is protected.

Let’s return for a bit to the numbers. As a daily habit, software developers utilize Git and hosting platforms such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab version control systems. This is where code is generated, stored and developer teams spend thousands of hours (and money) writing, supporting and improving projects.

GitHub is committed to registering more than 56 million developers and establishing 60 million repositories last year. Even Fortune 50 businesses account for 72 percent of their membership. It makes it the world’s most important source code. GitLab estimates more than 30 million users, whereas Atlassian Bitbucket surpassed 10 million users in 2019.

However, the source code may be lost or inaccessible even if housed in such trustworthy organizations as GitHub, GitLab, or Atlassian.

Ups, something went wrong…

External information is one of the causes. With 100 percent availability, no service provider can assure clients. For example, the GitHub service lasted for hours and affected millions of engineers in June 2020. The greatest GitLab service failures occurred in 2017. It did not exist for several hours throughout the tragedy. They also lost some production data they couldn’t retrieve at long last. And this is only an iceberg tip…

Git users are not combating Ransomware. In 2019, the technology media claimed that attackers were targeting GitHub users, GitLab and Bitbucket, deleting code and committing from many projects. Ransomware hits every 11 seconds this year, and it is projected to generate global losses of …. 20 billion dollars by the end of 2021.

And to mention human error, which for most businesses is the greatest risk. Everywhere, mistakes occur at work. Head overwriting, branch deletion, old repository deletion, loss or lack of a local copy – these are some developer errors that can endanger or even irrevocably remove source code.

Shared Responsibility

GitHub, GitLab and Atlassian, and other SaaS providers utilize shared responsibility models that identify the security obligations the service provider handles and which are a User of the business. In short: the version management systems providers maintain the infrastructure and ensure that there are accessible data and that user data are safeguarded, preserve, restore.

Although many administration, monitoring, code development security applications are accessible on the Atlassian and GitHub markets, the backup software has a large niche.

How do companies handle source code data protection today?

They don’t usually handle this at all. And if so, DIY techniques are often based on the command git-clone and the automatic scripts. Some companies rely on local git instances for snapshots. But these techniques have limits – high-period script management expenses, no backup checks, no automation and no restoration assurance that makes backup useless.

The market for source code backups is still on the move – as a consequence of the internal development teams, first backup solutions start to emerge. But there are several well-established and experienced backup suppliers, like Xopero Software, saw this niche and chose to develop it with GitProtect.io to make it GitHub and Bitbucket’s most professional backup software. This solution is based on a company-leading product that now offers GitHub and Bitbucket users all its professional business-class capabilities.

Considering the value and attention on the proper security of information on GitHub and Atlassian’s, we may predict that the GitHub and Atlassian backups will become another major field of data protection in the footsteps of Microsoft and Google Workspace.