Government IT bosses have been told that open source software can and should be used to secure public sector systems if the technology could be implemented correctly.

During January’s ICT conference in London, Ian Levy, technical director at the Communication Electronics Security Group (CESG) commented that open source should not be dismissed as a means of securing software, and the public sector should wake up to the truth of how open source technology is created in order to take advantage of its benefits.

An example highlighted by Levy was that of Bristol City Council, which opted for open source despite having originally thought that it was prohibited from using non-propriety software.

"They thought they had to use Novell or Microsoft and the CESG would not have supported its use of open source," he explained. However, there were no barriers in place against buying OSS.

"Software attracts security threats no matter what it is but the risk depends on how you manage them," Levy commented at the ICT conference. "Apache is a great example of good open source software organisations can use."