Securing Your Software Supply Chain Requires a Dynamic SBOM

Concern is growing over the rise in software supply chain attacks and the need to develop better risk management policies. The software attack surface continues to grow, which in turn, increases risk.

Recent high-profile attacks impacting companies including SolarWinds and Kaseya illustrate how vulnerable the software supply chain is today. And a new study finds that software developers are under greater scrutiny to manage the vulnerabilities found in the software supply chain –which is defined as everything that touches an application throughout the entire software development life cycle.

The report by Coalfire found that 51% of senior leadership are now prioritizing supply chain security, and 36% will allocate more than 10% of their application security budgets to this issue.

This awareness comes at a good time. Almost 60% of supply chain attacks are aimed at gaining access to data such as personal information and intellectual property – and around 16% of attacks are an attempt to gain access to people, according to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

The Role of a Dynamic SBOM in Securing the Supply Chain

For any organization involved with securing the software supply chain, a key requirement is a software bill of materials (SBOM), a formal record that contains the details and relationships of the various components in the supply chain that are used to build software.

An SBOM will enhance visibility into the entire software supply chain by tracking compliance, open source licenses, and dependencies between open source components in the software development life cycle (SDLC). In fact, 53% of respondents in the Coalfire study are leaning into SBOM and DAST to take positive steps to impact risk. Another 54% are investigating how SBOM can help mitigate risk.

Visibility is Only One Piece of the Vulnerability Management Puzzle

But it’s not enough to have visibility, you also need to be able to identify software vulnerabilities and make the appropriate fixes as attackers change their tactics. This is where a dynamic SBOM comes in. A Dynamic SBOM not only requires an inventory of all components as the starting point but also the ability to update them as software is added.

Because vulnerabilities are constantly being discovered in an environment, it has become a challenge for IT to keep up. This is why it is critical to build security in throughout the software development lifecycle. If vulnerabilities are discovered, Dynamic SBOMs provide a way to document security flaws and fixes.

With this approach, security is not added in as an afterthought at the end, and it ensures that product security isn’t sacrificed over speed of development. Building security into the development lifecycle through initiatives such as DevSecOps has never been more important and integrating DSBOMs into the lifecycle and producing them automatically at various stages of development will become the standard going forward.

Dynamic SBOMs provide security teams with the information to assess the potential impact and risks introduced by the vulnerable component. They help determine whether those vulnerable components are developed internally, commercially, or from open source libraries. For these reasons, you cannot adequately protect the software supply chain without a Dynamic SBOM.

Rezilion’s Dynamic SBOM Offers Both Visibility and Context for Holistic Software Attack Surface Management

With Rezilon’s Dynamic SBOM, customers know their real attack surface as it changes dynamically. The platform seamlessly plugs into all software environments, from development to production, and provides full-stack coverage of third-party and home- grown software across hosts, containers, and application layers.

Unlike static SBOMs, Rezilion’s Dynamic SBOM does more than just uncover what software components are there: It reveals if and where they’re being executed in runtime (if loaded to memory, they are exploitable, if not loaded, they don’t pose a risk), providing organizations with an unparalleled solution to understand where bugs exist — but also whether they could be exploited by attackers.

Rezilion makes it easier for teams to manage and eliminate software vulnerabilities.

• Inventory all of your software components in real time with a Dynamic Software Bill of Materials (SBOM).
• Pinpoint specific vulnerabilities and know if they’re exploitable in your environment.
• Filter out the noise from scan results to focus on what matters, fast.

Get started on a new path to vulnerability management and book a demo to see our Dynamic SBOM in action today.