Key Takeaways:

• SCA is foundational to the future of software supply chain security, providing visibility, control, and governance over open source risk.

• Transitive dependencies introduce hidden risk, often buried deep within trusted packages and overlooked by traditional scanning approaches.

• Automation is essential to keeping pace with modern development scale and velocity.

• Shifting security left enables earlier detection and faster remediation across the SDLC.

• Cultural alignment across Dev, Sec, and Ops is critical to sustaining software supply chain best practices at scale.

The State of Open Source Risk in Today’s Software Supply Chain

Open source software (OSS) is the backbone of modern software development, powering innovation across finance, healthcare, government, and technology. to innovate faster and reduce costs. Its widespread adoption accelerates delivery and reduces costs, but it also introduces a growing and increasingly complex risk landscape.

With open source components making up 90% of the average application, vulnerabilities are a constant threat. The attack surface of modern applications is expanding, not just from known vulnerabilities, but also from the complexity of software supply chains, regulatory shifts, and the speed of development.

Developers download an estimated 1.2 billion vulnerable dependencies every month, giving bad actors ample opportunities to infiltrate critical systems. Many of these vulnerabilities live in transitive dependencies, making them difficult to detect and even harder to prioritize without the right tools.

Software composition analysis (SCA) has emerged as a critical component of the future of software supply chain security to help organizations gain visibility into their dependencies, evaluate associated risks, and ensure license compliance.

To address the evolving risk landscape, Sonatype outlined software supply chain best practices with actionable insights that leading organizations are using to stay ahead of emerging threats.

Software Supply Chain Best Practices for (Read more...)