It's no secret that companies of all kinds use third-party software in their own products. Mobile OEMs are a great example--new phones often contain code from of hundreds of code suppliers--both open source and proprietary.

A new "Software Integrity Risk Report" commissioned by software analyst Coverity and conducted by Forrester Research points to a growing discrepancy in the quality and security standards businesses are applying to their internally developed code versus code supplied by third-parties.

This can lead to an increased risk of software defects, translating to an increased risk of software failure and impact to brand image and revenue. The report also reveals a skewed risk-to-responsibility culture forming between companies and third-party developers.

From the survey:

I e-mailed with Coverity CMO Dave Peterson about what these results mean for businesses and development teams. He pointed out that development teams are being held responsible for integrity of software, even while most of it comes from external organizations over which they have no control.

According to Peterson, consumers will associate any software failure with the logo that's on the product, whether or not the code defect in question was in in-house code or from the code provided by one of a hundred third-party suppliers.

As part of effort to mitigate any potential fallout from faulty software, companies need to re-examine their internal code standards for quality and security and hold their third-party code suppliers to the same standards.