Webinar Description
Key Takeaways
- Explores software supply chain security strategies designed for AI-accelerated development environments
- Addresses the growing threat of malicious open source packages and supply chain attacks
- Examines cross-functional collaboration between AppSec, Platform Engineering, and Development teams
- Relevant for security professionals, developers, and engineering leaders in software-driven organisations
- Focuses on maintaining developer velocity while strengthening security posture
Introduction
Building Trust at the Speed of AI is a virtual webinar hosted by Sonatype on 19 August 2026, designed for application security professionals, platform engineers, and software developers navigating the complexities of modern software supply chain security. As AI-powered tools dramatically accelerate code generation and open source component adoption, organisations face mounting pressure to secure their development pipelines without sacrificing the velocity that makes these tools valuable in the first place.
The timing reflects a broader industry reckoning. Traditional vulnerability management approaches, built for slower development cycles, increasingly struggle to keep pace with the volume and sophistication of threats targeting software supply chains. Malicious packages, dependency confusion attacks, and rapidly evolving vulnerabilities now represent material risks that demand fundamentally different security strategies.
About This Event
This educational webinar brings together Sonatype’s product and security expertise to examine how organisations can build trust in their software supply chains while operating at the speed that AI-driven development demands. The session takes a strategic rather than hands-on approach, offering practical guidance applicable across technology, financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, and retail sectors.
Sonatype, known for its Nexus platform and stewardship of Maven Central, positions this event as thought leadership addressing one of the most pressing challenges in modern application security: how to secure software at its source without creating friction that undermines developer productivity.
The Challenge of AI-Accelerated Development
AI coding assistants and automated code generation tools have fundamentally changed the economics of software development. Teams can now produce and integrate code at unprecedented rates, pulling in open source components faster than traditional security review processes can evaluate them. This acceleration creates a widening gap between the pace of development and the capacity of security teams to identify and remediate risks.
The webinar examines why conventional vulnerability management falls short in this environment. Legacy approaches typically rely on periodic scanning and manual triage, processes that introduce delays incompatible with continuous delivery pipelines. When a new malware campaign targets popular open source packages, organisations using traditional methods may remain exposed for days or weeks before detection and response.
Supply Chain Threats and Malicious Packages
A significant portion of the discussion centres on preventing malicious open source components from entering development pipelines. Supply chain attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated, with threat actors publishing typosquatted packages, compromising legitimate maintainer accounts, and injecting malicious code into widely-used dependencies.
The session addresses how organisations can establish controls that intercept these threats before they reach developer workstations or build systems. This requires moving security earlier in the development lifecycle, a shift that demands both technical capabilities and organisational alignment between security and engineering functions.
Cross-Functional Collaboration in Security
Effective software supply chain security cannot exist in isolation. The webinar explores how Application Security teams, Platform Engineering groups, and developers can collaborate more effectively to secure the supply chain without creating bottlenecks. This collaboration model recognises that security outcomes depend on shared responsibility rather than centralised gatekeeping.
Platform Engineering teams play a particularly important role in this model, as they typically control the infrastructure and tooling that developers use daily. By embedding security controls into developer platforms, organisations can make secure practices the path of least resistance rather than an obstacle to productivity.
Who Should Attend
The webinar targets mid to senior-level professionals responsible for securing software development environments or leading engineering teams. Relevant roles include security engineers, DevOps practitioners, engineering managers, and product leaders with security responsibilities. The content assumes familiarity with software development practices and application security fundamentals, making it most valuable for practitioners already engaged with these challenges rather than those seeking introductory material.
Conclusion
As AI continues to reshape software development, the security strategies that served organisations in previous eras require significant evolution. Building Trust at the Speed of AI offers a focused examination of how security teams can adapt their approaches to match the realities of modern development, balancing the imperative to move quickly with the need to maintain trust in the software supply chain.