To prevent compromising security, enterprises are increasingly depending on technology that can build a software bill of materials (SBOM), which inventories the elements of a software programme as well as any related vulnerabilities.
Today, open source can be found in practically every corporate codebase and community initiative. The question for corporations isn’t whether or not they use open source code. It’s what open source code you’re utilising and how much of it you’re using. If you are unaware of what is in your software supply chain, an upstream vulnerability in one of your dependencies might influence your application, rendering it vulnerable to a possible compromise. In this post, we’ll look at how you can safeguard software supply chain security.
Developing
Building programmes from the ground up is costly, time-consuming, and simply impossible for businesses that need to move quickly and on a tight budget. In the last five years, the utilisation of in-house produced code for IoT projects has dropped to 50%, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t continue to fall.
To keep up, developers must rely on third-party and open-source components, and while integrating component testing into the workflow is great practise, developers frequently rely on trust. Creating an SBOM during this stage allows development teams additional insight into these components, allowing them to see any known (N-day) or zero-day vulnerabilities that may be lurking and ensure they are utilising licenced and updated versions of the software.
Regularly assessing components and creating SBOMs can provide development teams with the assurance that they are following quality and security criteria, while also allowing them to manage their component libraries proactively.
Delivery
Because of the increase in cybercrime experienced during the COVID pandemic, software development teams and suppliers are under pressure to offer solutions that fulfil stricter criteria. Too much software used today may be vulnerable to undisclosed flaws lying in third-party code, so new products must be rigorously tested to fulfil quality assurance requirements. When Osterman Research examined commercial off-the-shelf software, it discovered that all products contained open-source components and vulnerabilities; 85 percent of the open source components had significant vulnerabilities.
Before release and deployment, developed software should be subjected to a security assurance check to create an SBOM. The scan may identify the use of open source at this point and seek vulnerabilities that need to be patched or mitigated. This is a key element in ensuring that software provided to the market is as secure and free of vulnerabilities as possible, and it’s only a matter of time until it becomes a requirement for all software.
Deployment
With everything from office printers to vital systems now connected via the internet of things (IoT), the attack surface for discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities has grown significantly. As more processes are digitised, organisations are allocating more resources to the software required to operate them.
Information security teams can gain visibility into the software their business is currently using or adopting by reviewing acquired software. This can help businesses enhance their security posture, make more informed decisions, and respond faster to threats if another vulnerability like Log4j emerges.
Fortunately, thanks to software composition analysis (SCA) technology, almost any company can generate SBOMs. These programmes may generate an SBOM from either source code or binary data. Binary SCA tools evaluate compiled code, which is the actual final software provided and deployed by businesses. This gives them a competitive advantage since they can scan software components, libraries, and packages within programmes to generate an SBOM without access to the source code.
With the number of highly sophisticated supply chain assaults rising, the importance of SBOMs in discovering and addressing security vulnerabilities in software produced, distributed, or deployed by organisations cannot be overstated.
Conclusion
To sum it up, a software supply chain contains everything that enters or affects your code. Although supply chain hacks are real and rising in regularity, they are still extremely rare, so the most important thing you can do to protect your supply chain is to remedy your vulnerabilities. To successfully defend your software supply chain, you must first comprehend your environment’s dependencies, be aware of flaws in those dependencies, and quickly address them.
In the face of these security dangers, developers are constantly under pressure to produce applications quickly and efficiently, which leads to increased use of third-party code and open-source libraries like Log4J. To prevent compromising security, enterprises are increasingly depending on technology that can build a software bill of materials, which inventories the elements of a software programme as well as any related vulnerabilities.
