Aqua Security has announced its new Aqua Stars initiative, which looks to celebrate its top open source software (OSS) contributors.

The program introduces monthly awards to recognise contributors who have significantly impacted Aqua's open source projects and the cloud native security community.

These awards recognise the efforts of the largest open source cloud native security community in the world and those who help make cloud native security accessible to everyone.

Itay Shakury, Director of Open Source at Aqua, says the company is pleased to be able to celebrate the achievements within its growing community.

"Over the years, we have had the privilege of working with talented individuals who helped make our open source projects and community the success it is today. Now we want to take the opportunity to show our gratitude and formally recognise valued community members," he says.

"In addition to showing our appreciation, we hope that this program can help strengthen our open source community and encourage engagement, collaboration and impact."

Each month, Aqua says it will honour a Star Contributor with a prize. Aqua Stars will be featured in the Aqua Stars Hall of Fame, which will highlight their journeys in open source and their contributions. 

The program culminates with the recognition of a Super Star Contributor, who will join Aqua's open source team for an all-expenses-paid trip to KubeCon 2023.

To be considered for the Aqua Stars program, contributors will have made any kind of significant contribution to Aqua's key open source projects. 

Aqua is kicking off this initiative by recognising a group of contributors who have been instrumental in its community over the past 12 months.

Aqua says that Aqua Stars also acts as an extension of Aqua's mission to invest, advocate for and drive innovation within the OSS cloud native security community at large. 

The company says its commitment to OSS helps further educate engineering, security, and DevOps teams through accessible tools, reducing the skills gap and automating security controls into cloud native pipelines well before applications go into production. 

The company also highlights that Aquas open source projects have collectively amassed nearly 35,000 GitHub stars.

The Aqua Platform is said to be the industry's most integrated Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), which aims to prioritise risk and automate prevention, detection and response across the lifecycle. 

Aqua is headquartered in Boston, MA and Ramat Gan, IL, and currently services Fortune 1000 customers in over 40 countries.