Open source software security and dependency management have never been more critical, as organizations strive to protect their software supply chains while navigating increasing complexity and risks.
We recently hosted a webinar, "A Better Way to SCA: Industry Best Practices and How to Prepare for the Future," featuring Tyler Warden, Senior Vice President, Product at Sonatype, and Janet Worthington, Senior Analyst at Forrester.
With Sonatype recently recognized as an SCA leader in the Forrester Wave, let's look at the discussion topics that cover key trends, strategies, and industry benchmarks for improving software composition analysis (SCA).
The expanding role of SCA in open source security
As organizations continue to embrace open source software, SCA tools have become essential for managing the growing complexity of software dependencies and mitigating security risks.
The SCA space has seen a surge of new participants, including startups, cloud security vendors, and observability tools. This influx has driven innovation, with established providers standing out by adding features like malicious package detection and open source health assessments. Meanwhile, the rising threat of open source malware highlights the need for tools that go beyond identifying known vulnerabilities.
Leading SCA solutions now focus on the health of open source libraries. By assessing factors like community activity, update frequency, and project maintainability, these tools give organizations better insights into the reliability of their dependencies. This improves security and helps make smarter decisions when choosing and maintaining open source components.
Key practices for optimizing SCA
To ensure the effectiveness of SCA in securing software supply chains, organizations should focus on the following strategies:
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Inventory management: Establish a comprehensive inventory of all open source and third-party libraries used across applications and development tools. This inventory provides the foundation for visibility and risk management.
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Standardization: Avoid the proliferation of multiple versions of the same library within the organization. Standardizing on specific libraries and ensuring alignment across teams reduces risk and operational overhead.
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Proactive policies: Define clear policies for selecting, storing, and updating libraries, addressing licensing considerations, and scanning for vulnerabilities and malware. Continuous monitoring through automated scanning tools ensures compliance with these policies.
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Automation: Integrate SCA tools seamlessly into the development pipeline. Automation not only enhances security but also minimizes disruption to developer workflows by making compliance the path of least resistance.
The role of SBOMs in SCA
Software bills of materials (SBOMs) have emerged as a critical resource for software supply chain defense.
An SBOM provides a nested inventory of all dependencies within an application, including their direct and transitive dependencies.
Key benefits of SBOMs include:
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Transparency: SBOMs help organizations understand the components within their software, enabling informed decision-making and rapid response to vulnerabilities.
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Regulatory compliance: As regulatory frameworks increasingly mandate SBOMs, organizations can use them to demonstrate compliance and build trust with customers.
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Machine-readability: Modern SBOM formats, such as CycloneDX and SPDX, facilitate automated analysis, reducing manual effort and enabling more effective risk mitigation.
Future challenges: AI and ML in SCA
The rise of AI and machine learning (ML) models has added new challenges to SCA, as they are often sourced from public repositories and share traits with open source components. Organizations must address these challenges to ensure security and integrity.
Ensuring model provenance is vital for verifying the origins and training data of AI/ML models and preventing malicious components from entering systems. Similarly, APIs interacting with these models need strong security to prevent unauthorized access. Attackers embedding vulnerabilities or creating malicious models pose new threats to software supply chains.
To tackle these challenges, organizations must update their SCA practices to include AI/ML governance. This means assessing models and their dependencies with the same rigor as traditional software, while updating policies and tools to meet the needs of this growing field.
Strengthening the software supply chain
The intersection of effective tools, thoughtful policies, and strong collaboration is critical to staying ahead in the rapidly shifting regulatory and threat environments.
By embracing advanced SCA practices, leveraging SBOMs, and integrating security into every stage of development, organizations can build stronger, more resilient software supply chains.
For a deeper exploration of the transformative impact of SCA, check out the full webinar on-demand.
